Bush and Kerry flat out as election looms

US President George Bush and election challenger John Kerry were entering a final breathless weekend of campaigning today, ahead of Tuesday’s election.

The tonnes of explosives that went missing from Iraq continued to dominate the agenda.

Senator Kerry has used the fact that the weaponry may have fallen into insurgent hands as an example of what he calls Mr Bush’s poorly planned Iraq strategy.

It is still not entirely clear whether the 380 tonnes of high-powered explosives went missing before or after the invasion.

But ABC News today revealed a video of American soldiers at the al-Qaqaa storage facility, south of Baghdad, nine days after the fall of Saddam.

Explosives were still in place, denting Bush Administration suggestions that they were moved or looted before US troops arrived.

Some of the boxes of explosives had been sealed by UN weapons inspectors.

The Kerry campaign also seized on news that the FBI had begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid Iraq reconstruction contracts to Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

“At every turn for the past four years, George Bush and Dick Cheney gave out special favours and looked out for their special interest friends,” said Mr Kerry’s running mate, Senator John Edwards.

Meanwhile, the Bush team was also feeling the heat over a television advert in which a photograph of US soldiers had been doctored.

Some sections of the photograph had been duplicated in a single image, leading the Kerry team to allege the Bush campaign was being misleading.

A Bush spokesman said it was an “editing error”.

Mr Bush meanwhile, was hoping to seize the news agenda back from Mr Kerry by campaigning with action hero-turned politician Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The two were making appearances in Ohio, a crucial swing state.

Despite appearing to be on the defensive in recent days, the Bush team is still ahead in the polls but by the tiniest margin.

The true test is which campaign can mobilise its support in the swing states, particularly Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

New battleground surveys suggested Mr Kerry was leading in Ohio and Michigan, while Mr Bush was ahead in Florida and the two were tied in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Oregon.

Mr Bush told the newspaper USA Today he was not worried that the election could end with no clear winner, as the 2000 race notoriously did.

“It’s important that everybody vote, it’s important that the elections be fair, and it’s important that the election end on election night,” he said in an interview.

But with many thousands of lawyers and election observers watching every move, and with the race so close, a clear outcome is far from guaranteed.