US: The re-election campaign of President George Bush has launched an all-out effort on several levels to discredit Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry as weak on national security.
Vice President Mr Dick Cheney yesterday cited Mr Kerry's Senate votes to argue that his judgement on national security could not be trusted. At the same time the Bush/Cheney re-election committee launched a $10 million advertising spree accusing Mr Kerry of voting to deny weapons "vital to winning the war on terror".
Republicans have also seized on an issue which has clearly rattled Mr Kerry - whether or not he threw away campaign medals in a 1971 Vietnam War protest.
When the medals controversy came up in previous elections, Mr Kerry said he discarded only his ribbons, not his three Purple Hearts or Bronze and Silver Stars for bravery.
The New York Times yesterday published a comment from Mr Kerry in a November 1971 TV interview it dug up. "I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine," he said, "... and above that I gave back my others."
Mr Kerry retorted yesterday that he was referring to his own ribbons and to two medals he threw away for two servicemen who could not attend, but the controversy has revived accusations that he dishonoured the war dead.
"The republicans have spent $60 million in the last few weeks trying to attack me and this comes from a president and a republican party that can't even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the national guard," Mr Kerry said. "This is a phoney controversy," he told ABC News. "I'm not going to stand for it."
In a much-heralded speech Mr Cheney, who has said he had "other priorities" during Vietnam, criticised Mr Kerry for supporting military and intelligence cuts during his four terms in the Senate.
"The senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security," he said.
Democratic National Committee chairman Mr Terry McAuliffe replied that as defence secretary from 1989-1992 Mr Cheney himself tried to kill more than 81 weapons programs and to reduce the size of the military by 700,000.
"The American people have better things to do with their time than listen to more misleading attacks from a man who has been misleading them from the day he took office," Mr McAuliffe said.
The anti-Kerry TV commercials show war scenes, while a voice announces: "As our troops defend America in the war on terror, they must have what it takes to win. Yet, John Kerry has repeatedly opposed weapons vital to winning the war on terror ... Kerry even voted against body armor for our troops on the front line of the war on terror."
The ads are tailored for different states to show how the votes related to military industrial contracts there.
Mr Kerry did not vote against body armour specifically but against the $87 billion appropriation for the war in Iraq. Yesterday Newsweek reported that one in four US soldiers killed there could have been saved if the Bush administration had provided proper armour.
The attacks on Mr Kerry are part of an attempt to define the Democratic candidate in their own terms, while the Massachusetts senator tried to define himself to the electorate.
They have succeeded in putting the decorated Vietnam war veteran on the defensive but some analysts say they could backfire among voters who resent negative campaigning and that they risk reminding people that the president and vice president did not experience military combat.