Bush kicks off campaign with Union address

With Campaign 2004 officially under way, US President George Bush was using his State of the Union address tonight to call for modest expansions in health care and job-training programmes, while urging Americans to stand behind him in the war on terrorism.

Bush was using one of the year’s brightest political spotlights to highlight his election-year agenda, a day after Democrats formally kicked off their presidential nomination selection process with an Iowa caucuses victory for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.