Democratic presidential candidate Mr John Kerry has been accused of being an "arm-chair general" after he lambasted the Bush administration following the disclosure that 380 tonnes of explosives had been stolen in Iraq after last year's US-led invasion.
US vice President Mr Dick Cheney, campaigning in the battleground state of Florida, said the high-grade explosives missing from the Al Qaqaa storage facility may not even have been there when US troops arrived after invading Iraq.
The New York Timesrevealed on Monday that the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the site had not been secured by the US military after the March 2003 invasion despite their warnings.
The explosives could potentially be used to make a detonator for a nuclear bomb, blow up an airplane or a building or in numerous other military and civilian applications.
President Bush has not addressed the issue and ignored two questions about it during a bus tour in Wisconsin and Iowa yesterday. But his campaign officials pointed to an NBC television network report that the explosives at Al Qaqaa did not appear to have been there when US-led forces arrived in April 2003.
With a week before the US election, Mr Kerry seized on the revelation, saying it undercut President Bush's main rationale for re-election - his claim that his policies have made America safer against the threat of terrorism.
On the campaign trail in Wisconsin, Mr Kerry accused Mr Bush of trying to hide news of missing explosives.
Noting Mr Bush has said repeatedly that progress was being made in Iraq and that the United States is safer under his leadership, Mr Kerry asked, "And what did the president have to say about the missing explosives? Not a word."
The White House acknowledged the disappearance of the explosives and said Mr Bush learned of it sometime after October 15th. Mr Cheney insisted operations in Iraq have been a success.
"Senator Kerry is playing arm-chair general and not doing a very good job of it and this should come as no surprise," Mr Cheney said.
The vice president said the United States has found and secured hundreds of thousands of tonnes of weapons in Iraq.
"If our troops had not gone into Iraq, that is 400,000 tonnes of weapons and explosives would be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be sitting in his palace instead of jail."