US President George W. Bush tried last night to convince American voters he has made them safer since the September 11th, 2001, attacks and told them going to war in Iraq was the right decison.
Faced with polls that show many believe the terror threat against them has increased due to the Iraq war, Mr Bush argued that wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and al-Qaeda have made them safer, as has diplomacy that led Libya to abandon its weapons program.
"Today because America has acted, and because America has led, the forces of terror and tyranny have suffered defeat after defeat, and America and the world are safer," Mr Bush told employees at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where components of Libya's nuclear program are being stored.
Mr Bush's war against terrorism was supposed to be an easy sell on the campaign trail, and is an important plank of his re-election effort.
But the Iraq war has spawned doubts among Americans. In a recent NBC News/Wall St Journal poll, 51 per cent of Americans said they felt the threat of terror was increased, not reduced.
His Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, responded by saying Mr Bush's policies had made the country less safe by failing to secure nuclear material that could fall into the hands of terrorists and by allowing North Korea to become more of a threat.
A Senate intelligence committee report last week said US intelligence agencies overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, one of the White House's chief justifications for the war that removed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power. No such weapons were ever found.
"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq," Mr Bush said. "We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them."
Democrats have used the report to accuse Mr Bush of exaggerating evidence used to justify war against Iraq. Republicans said the Bush administration was a victim of bad intelligence.