ORLANDO, Oct 19: John Kerry mounted a furious counterattack against George W. Bush on national security on Tuesday, seeking to regain the momentum in their heated presidential race two weeks before polling day.
Polls showed the two running neck-and-neck ahead of the November 2 ballot, with the Republican Bush clinging to the barest of leads nationally but his Democratic rival picking up steam in key state battles.
As both stumped for support in the crucial south eastern state of Florida, the Kerry campaign rolled out its media artillery to counter Bush's most withering assault on the Massachusetts senator's security policies.
The president said on Monday his challenger had only a "piecemeal and symbolic" strategy for dealing with terrorism that was tantamount to "giving up" the fight after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The Democrats responded with a television advertisement that bemoaned "the mess in Iraq created by George Bush" and sought again to bolster the command credentials they thought Kerry had established in the campaign debates.
"John Kerry has voted for the largest military and intelligence budget increases in our nations history," an announcer said. "(He was) endorsed by chairmen of the joint chiefs under Presidents Reagan and Clinton."
The ad also contained a Kerry rejoinder to Bush's charge that the Democrat did not believe in pre-emptive military action: "As president, Ill stop at nothing to get the terrorists before they get us."
Kerry's senior advisor Mike McCurry said Bush's diatribe opened up a crucial stage of the campaign end game.
"We cannot let that argument stand. We are going to be rebuffing it very aggressively over the next 48-72 hours," McCurry told reporters on Kerry's campaign plane late Monday.
Most opinion polls gave Bush a slight lead in the race nationwide, but still within the margin of error. The Republican appeared to have checked Kerry's surge from his strong performance in their three debates.
In the latest surveys released Tuesday, the Washington Post put Bush up 50-47 per cent while a New York Times/CBS News poll had the candidates tied at 46 per cent.
Two earlier polls, by Newsweek magazine and Gallup, had Bush ahead by two to three points among registered voters but six to eight points among likely voters, suggesting turnout could be a major factor on November 2.
The Washington Post said on Tuesday that in 13 crucial swing states, Kerry led the president by 50 to 46 per cent. Other polls have shown the Democrat running virtually even with Bush in the battlegrounds.
Several analysts suggested the next president would be the candidate who won two out of three in the states of Florida, Ohio in the midwest and Pennsylvania in the East. Kerry had all three on his schedule Tuesday.-AFP