- America's increasingly bitter election turned ugly
yesterday
amid a flurry of attacks and counter-attacks on issues ranging from the
candidates' Vietnam war records to Teresa Heinz Kerry's tax returns.
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- As the race for the White House enters its final stretch,
both campaigns are relentlessly on the offensive in a brutally negative
campaign. The Democrats have now launched an attack against a conservative
television network which is preparing to broadcast a 42-minute documentary
on Kerry's protests against the Vietnam war.
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- Kerry's lawyers have written to Sinclair Broadcasting
to demand that its 62 stations give the Democrats the same airtime as the
controversial programme. The Democrats have also complained to the Federal
Communications Commission, a government broadcasting watchdog.
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- The show - Stolen Honour - Wounds That Never Heal -
features
interviews with 17 former POWs who say Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony on
US war crimes in Vietnam led to them being kept prisoner for longer. The
film echoes the attacks made on Kerry's war record by a Republican-linked
group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which came close to derailing his
campaign.
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- A Sinclair spokesman said that the network has offered
Kerry an interview slot after the broadcast. His campaign has turned down
the offer, saying it was an attempt at a 'political set-up'. Sinclair has
asked its stations to pull their regular programming to make space for
the documentary which will be shown this week. The move has many Democrats
worried because Sinclair broadcasts in several key swing states.
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- However, new controversy has emerged over George W.
Bush's
Vietnam service as a pilot in the National Guard after 31 new pages of
documents surfaced yesterday, two weeks after National Guard officials
had signed legal oaths swearing they had turned over all the President's
records. Bush has been criticised for poor attendance, losing his flight
status and failing to show up at all for a long period of his service
before
leaving early to go to business school. A National Guard spokesman said
the new discovery was simply a matter of the poor state of the
records.
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- At the same time ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry
released
a series of documents detailing her tax returns. Republican campaigners
have been demanding for months that she reveal her contributions, though
candidates' wives are under no obligation to do so. The records showed
that she paid a federal tax rate of about 12.5 per cent on income of about
$5 million. Republican operatives are keen to make such huge wealth an
issue in the campaign and frequently refer to her multiple houses and
enormous
fortune.
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- Meanwhile, the candidates campaigned in key swing states.
Bush was in Florida, which decided the result in 2000, and Kerry in Ohio,
seen as perhaps the most vital this year.
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- Polls show Bush with a narrow lead, blunting a recent
Democrat surge in the wake of Bush's poor performances in the presidential
debates. A study from top polling firm Zogby International showed Bush
leading Kerry 48 per cent to 44. However, the Rasmussen tracking poll has
Bush with just a two-point lead, 48 per cent to 46, and a Washington Post
study released on Friday had the candidates at 48 per cent each.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004
- /story/0,13918,1329397,00.html
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