Republicans, Democrats clash over anti-terror war

The Kerry camp struck back by accusing President George W. Bush of dangerously alienating US allies and said that "arrogance isn't a virtue" when it comes to defending the country after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Cheney kicked off the latest exchange with a broadside at Kerry's pledge last week to wage a "more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror" that reaches out to other countries.

"A sensitive war will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 people and developed weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more," Cheney said while campaigning in the key midwestern state of Ohio.

"The people who beheaded (Wall Street Journal reporter) Daniel Pearl and (US contractor) Paul Johnson will not be impressed by our sensitivity," he said.

Cheney said the United States was in a "fight to preserve our freedom and our way of life ... (and) those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed."

In response to Cheney's comments, Kerry told ABC News: "It's sad that they can only be negative. They have nothing to say about the future vision of America. I think Americans want a positive vision for the future."

The Democratic candidate's campaign issued a statement from nine retired senior military officers, including former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark, and one active lieutenant general, accusing Cheney and Bush of taking "their campaign to the gutter."

With the November 2 election shaping up as a cliffhanger, the Republicans have stepped up their attacks on Kerry's credentials as a commander-in-chief which the Massachussets senator highlighted at his nominating convention last month.

"The job of the commander-in-chief as he sees it is to use America's military strength to respond to attacks," Cheney said. "But September 11 showed us, as surely as anything can, that we must act against gathering dangers, not wait to be attacked. "In the world we live in now, responding to attacks is not enough. We must do everything in our power to prevent attacks, and that includes using military force," said Cheney, a key architect of the US invasion of Iraq.