Kerry hammers Bush on Bin Laden

DEMOCRATIC challenger John Kerry hammered George W Bush over Osama bin Laden and then turned on the US President over domestic issues, criticising cuts in after-school programmes, health care coverage and jobs lost in the past four years.

Making his fifth consecutive Sunday appearance at a mostly black church, this day in hotly contested Ohio, the Democratic presidential nominee quoted the Bible and criticised his White House rival without naming him.

“There is a standard by which we have to live,” Mr Kerry said. “Coming to church on Sundays and talking about faith and professing faith isn’t the whole deal.”

Mr Bush opened his day in a battleground to the south, at worship services at a Catholic church in Miami, Florida. Mr Bush, who has assiduously courted Catholics during his term, was accompanied by his wife Laura, his brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush, and other relatives. He was all but endorsed by Monsignor Jude O’Doherty.

“Mr President, I want you to know that I admire your faith and your courage to profess it,” Mr O’Doherty said.

Mr Bush planned three campaign rallies across the length of Florida, followed by another in Cincinnati. After Ohio, Mr Kerry planned a stop in New Hampshire before following Mr Bush to Florida, where he earned a narrow victory in 2000.

With the race too close to call, Mr Bush and Mr Kerry also sought to turn to their advantage the re-emergence of Osama bin Laden.

“The terrorists who killed thousands of innocent people are still dangerous and they are determined,” Mr Bush told supporters at a Wisconsin rally Saturday.

Campaigning not far from the president, Mr Kerry responded to Bin Laden’s re-emergence with his months-old criticism of Mr Bush’s post-September 11 tactics in Afghanistan, Bin Laden’s once and perhaps current home.

“As I have said for two years now, when Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords,” Mr Kerry said on Saturday. “It was wrong to divert our forces from Afghanistan so we could rush to war with Iraq without a plan to win the peace.”

Vice President Dick Cheney said that Mr Kerry had turned his back on US troops in order to get ahead.

On Saturday, the two candidates responded to Bin Laden’s tape in ways reflecting their long-held campaign strategies.

At his first stop in Republican-leaning western Michigan, Mr Bush reminded supporters of the 2001 attacks. “Americans go to the polls at a time of war and ongoing threats unlike any we have faced before,” Mr Bush said.

In response to the videotape, the Bush administration warned state and local officials that the tape may be intended to promote or signal an attack.

Mr Kerry pledged anew to “destroy, capture, kill Osama bin Laden and all of the terrorists.”