An excellent piece on US elections from the liberal Independent:
Campaign gets dirty as muckrakers turn over Kerry's personal life and Bush troubles return
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
13 February 2004The United States election is still almost nine months away. But if recent events are any guide, the campaign already promises to be the dirtiest on record - with much of the muckraking centred not on Iraq, but allegations of sexual infidelity and a war which ended 30 years ago.
This week President George Bush's record in the National Guard during the Vietnam war was submitted to sharp new questioning. Old photos have surfaced of John Kerry - his most likely opponent this autumn - sitting at an anti-Vietnam war rally three rows behind the actress Jane Fonda, a favourite conservative bête noire.
In what may be more than co-incidence, The Harvard Crimson magazine has unearthed an interview Mr Kerry gave the student paper in 1970, urging that US troops be put under the command of the United Nations - again a subject that makes Republicans apoplectic.
Republicans have seized on the remarks by Mr Kerry, then a leading spokesman of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, as proof of the Massachusetts senator's softness on defence. In the interview, Mr Kerry describes himself as "an internationalist" who wanted to see US troops deployed across the world "only at the directive of the UN", and activities by the CIA "almost eliminated". Who is behind this simultaneous unearthing of ancient material is unclear, but political veterans suspect the shadowy hand of the Republican "opposition research" department which has long been amassing information on the Democratic candidates.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=490822