Bush campaign ads anger September 11 relatives

US President George W Bush’s re-election campaign commercials have angered several relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks.

A firefighters union that has endorsed Democratic presidential rival John Kerry also demanded that the ads be pulled.

The White House defended the commercials, on air for just one day, which show images of the skeletal remains of the World Trade Centre and firefighters bearing a stretcher through the rubble.

“It makes me sick,” said Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother Bill Kelly Jr, in the attacks and leads a victims families group called Peaceful Tomorrows. “Would you ever go to someone’s grave site and use that as an instrument of politics? That truly is what Ground Zero represents to me.”

In Bal Harbour, Florida, the International Association of Fire Fighters Union approved a resolution asking the Bush campaign to pull the ads, spokesman Jeff Zack said.

The resolution also urges Mr Bush to “apologise to the families of firefighters killed on 9/11 for demeaning the memory of their loved ones in an attempt to curry support for his re-election”.

The union gave Mr Kerry an early endorsement in the presidential race. Elections are to be held in November.

The controversy erupted as Mr Bush’s re-election campaign began airing the commercials nationally on cable television and on broadcast stations in about 80 media markets in 18 states.

The ads refer both to the terrorist attacks and to the recent recession, and are designed to project Mr Bush as a candidate offering “steady leadership in times of change”. The commercials do not mention Mr Kerry.

One of the ads shows the charred wreckage of the twin towers with a US flag flying amid the debris.

Another ad – and a Spanish-language version of it – use that image as well as firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher through the rubble as sirens are heard. Firefighters are shown in all the ads.

Mr Bush had said he would not use the attacks for political gain. His aides defended the use of the images.

“September 11 changed the equation in our public policy. It forever changed the world,” said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary. “The President’s steady leadership is vital to how we wage war on terrorism.”

Several relatives of victims also praised the ads.

“These images honour those whose lives were lost,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon at the hands of hijackers.

Deena Burnett, a Little Rock, Arkansas, resident whose husband Tom was one of the passengers on United Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field, said the ads were ”a perfect reminder of what happened that day”.

Mr Bush is not the first politician to cite the terrorist attacks in campaign ads. In 2002, New York Governor George Pataki mentioned the tragedy in an ad shown to victims’ families for approval before it was broadcast.

But the images in the Bush ads have sparked a furore.

Kristen Breitweiser, of New Jersey, whose husband, Ronald Breitweiser, died in the World Trade Centre, said Bush should not use the tragedy as “political propaganda”.

She said: “Three thousand people were murdered on President Bush’s watch. He has not co-operated with the investigation to find out why that happened”, a reference to the effort the Bush administration has made in working with the September 11 commission investigating the intelligence failures.

Harold Schaitberger, the firefighter union’s president, said: “We’re not going to stand for him to put his arm around one of our members on top of a pile of rubble at Ground Zero during a tragedy and then stand by and watch him cut money for first responders.”