US: After shaking up his campaign and taking advice from former President Bill Clinton, Mr John Kerry went on the offensive yesterday, accusing President Bush of waging "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."
The Democratic challenger, on a Labour Day tour of the Midwest, also told voters he would try to bring US troops home from Iraq within four years. "We want those troops home, and my goal would be to try to get them home in my first term," Mr Kerry said, replying to a fellow Vietnam War veteran at a campaign event.
Mr Bush fired back later, telling supporters in Missouri, that Mr Kerry was a politician who couldn't decide what his policies were. "After voting for the war, but against funding it, after saying he would have voted for the war even knowing everything we know today, my opponent woke up this morning with new campaign advisers and yet another new position," Mr Bush said.
"Suddenly he's against it again. No matter how many times Senator Kerry changes his mind, it was right for America and it's right for America now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power."
Mr Kerry, in his first sustained attack on Mr Bush over Iraq, also accused the President of rushing to war "without a plan to win the peace" and with a coalition that was "the phoniest thing I ever heard." The $200 billion spent could have gone to schools, healthcare, prescription drugs and to Social Security, he said.
With polls in Newsweek and Time both showing Mr Bush surging ahead by 11 points after a successful Republican convention last week, Mr Kerry's campaign has recruited Clinton advisers to make a more compelling case, including former White House aides Mr Joe Lockhart, Mr Joel Johnson and Mr Doug Sosnik, and strategists Mr James Carville and Mr Paul Begala who helped Mr Clinton win in 1992.
When Mr Kerry telephoned President Clinton in his New York hospital room to wish him well on Friday, Mr Clinton suggested he call back on Saturday for what became a 90-minute counselling session during which the former president reportedly told Mr Kerry he should forget about Vietnam and sharpen his criticism of President Bush.
Mr Kerry also took Mr John Sasso, a longtime political adviser from Boston who is known to stand up to the candidate, as his senior adviser aboard the campaign plane. Up to now Mr Kerry has been hesitant to criticise the war for fear of being seen as unpatriotic.
The defection of Democratic Senator Zell Miller to Republican ranks has given Mr Bush an opportunity to broaden his appeal. In Parkersburg, West Virginia, on Sunday Mr Bush said, "I think old Zell Miller set a pretty good tempo for Democrats all across the country. He made it clear it's all right to come and support the Bush ticket."
Mr Kerry's poll numbers slumped after Republicans turned the campaign from a referendum on the President into a referendum on the Democratic challenger, who has been damaged by mostly baseless attacks by veterans on his combat record and also by his own lassitude in the face of a rip-roaring Republican campaign.
It took Mr Kerry 15 days to respond to the veterans' criticisms and he vented his fury at campaign manager Ms Beth Cahill for advising they would not hurt him, Newsweek reported.