10 February 2004	Tuesday	18 Zilhaj 1424

WASHINGTON, Feb 9: US President George Bush's political stock has tumbled sharply since December, the failure to find banned Iraqi arms looming large over his reelection not quite two months after Saddam Hussein's capture.

Over the same period, his likely Democratic rival in the November political contest, Senator John Kerry, appears to be the odds-on favourite for the party's nomination after dethroning the pugnacious erstwhile frontrunner, Howard Dean.

And Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran not shy about campaigning with former comrades-in-arms, has levelled increasingly sharp attacks at what is shaping up to be a driving election issue: Bush's credibility.

In the latest sign of the president's vulnerability on the issue just nine months before the vote, a CNN/Time Magazine poll out Sunday found that just 44 percent of those queried consider him "a leader I can trust."

Fifty-five percent, however, said they "have some doubts and reservations," according to the February 5-6 poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Other surveys have shown Bush's job approval ratings south of the crucial 50-percent mark, and that a hypothetical election held today would be a toss-up between him and the Massachusetts senator.

That prospect seemed dim in mid-December, when Kerry had been all-but written off and Bush was riding high after Saddam's dramatic arrest and data showing the US economy grew at a 19-year record pace in the third quarter.

Since then, job growth has come in fits and starts, deadly attacks on US troops have continued, and, most damagingly, the former chief US weapons hunter has reported that the weapons of mass destruction at the core of Bush's case for war did not exist on the eve of the US-led March 2003 invasion.

After the inspector, David Kay, lent his voice to a growing chorus calling for an investigation into why pre-war claims about Iraqi arms have not borne out, Bush dropped his opposition to the probe.

But he has drawn fire from left and right over his decision to put off a final report by his hand-picked commission to March 2005 - months after he hopes to secure a second four-year term.

"I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons," Bush said in a rare, hour-long interview Sunday with NBC television, a gamble aimed at reversing his steady decline.

The interview came after his annual "State of the Union" speech on January 20 failed to restore much hoped-for lustre to his record, while the historic deficits envisioned in his new budget have drawn fire from Democrats but also from fiscal conservatives whose support he wants come November.

Bush's call for manned trips to the Moon and beyond appeared to generate as much admiration as derision, as many editorial cartoonists showed Mars missions finding Iraq's banned weapons or fugitive terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

At least one poll seems to link Bush's public opinion drop to Kay's public comments, starting after he was replaced on January 23, that the pre-war claims about Saddam's supposed arsenals were probably wrong.

Bush plummeted 10 points from January 25 to January 31, from a high of 64 percent after the State of the Union to 54 percent, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey. -AFP