Bush and Kerry sharpen their battle on Iraq

Democrat John Kerry yesterday called the Iraq war the "most catastrophic" of President George W. Bush's many wrong choices, but Mr Bush accused Mr Kerry of stealing lines from his old rival Howard Dean.

Mr Kerry, sharpening his attacks on Mr Bush after a week of being pummelled at the Republican convention, said the president made the wrong choice in going to war in Iraq and the resulting costs were depleting the budget of money needed for health care and other domestic needs.

"Of all the wrong choices that President Bush has made, the most catastrophic choice is the mess that he has made in Iraq," the Massachusetts senator said at a town hall meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina.

"This was his choice. He chose the date of the start of this war. He chose the moment and he chose for America to go it alone - and today all of America is paying the price," he said.

But Mr Bush, on a bus trip across the crucial swing state of Missouri, stepped up his criticism of Mr Kerry for what he said were shifting positions on the war in Iraq.

He lashed out at Mr Kerry for voting to authorise military action and then voting against funds to supply the troops, and accused his Democratic opponent of adopting the words and tone of anti-war campaigner Howard Dean.

Mr Dean, the former governor of Vermont, was beaten by Mr Kerry in the Democratic presidential primaries.

"He woke up yesterday morning with yet another new position, and this one is not even his own," Mr Bush said of Mr Kerry at a campaign stop in the Kansas City suburb of Lee's Summit, Missouri.

"It is that of his one-time rival, Howard Dean. He even used the same words Howard Dean did back when he supposedly disagreed with him," Mr Bush said, referring to Mr Kerry's recent descriptions of the war as "wrong".

Mr Kerry fell behind Mr Bush in the White House race after last week's Republican convention, with new polls showing a seven- to 11-point lead for Bush eight weeks before the November 2 election. Mr Kerry aides called it a short-lived bounce that would dissipate over the next few weeks.