US: Democrats have demanded that President George Bush should repudiate vice-president Dick Cheney's claim that opponents of the administration's troop build-up in Iraq "validate the al- Qaeda strategy".
House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she tried to call Mr Bush, who said recently that he welcomed the US political debate over the war, but failed to reach him.
"You cannot say as the president of the United States, 'I welcome disagreement in a time of war' and then have the vice-president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterise a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country," Ms Pelosi said.
Mr Cheney, who is visiting a number of Asian countries this week, sparked the row during an interview in Tokyo, when he criticised Ms Pelosi and Pennsylvania congressman Jack Murtha for seeking to place restrictions on funding for the war that could make it impossible for the administration to send 21,500 additional troops.
"If we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we'll do is validate the al-Qaeda strategy. The al-Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people - in fact, knowing they can't win in a stand-up fight, try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit," the vice-president said.
White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Mr Cheney was not questioning anyone's patriotism.
"What the president and the vice-president believe is that Nancy Pelosi's and Representative Murtha's plan is one that would not help secure our country and would leave the region in chaos. And securing Baghdad is absolutely critical. So it was a questioning of the merits of their proposal, not their patriotism," she said.
Mr Cheney told US troops at an airforce base on the Pacific island of Guam yesterday that America's enemies in the "war on terror" view the entire world as a battlefield and that radical Islamists are determined to build a totalitarian empire stretching from Spain to Indonesia.
"To serve that goal, the terrorists have declared an intention to arm themselves with chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, to destroy Israel, to intimidate all western countries and to cause great harm to the United States. We are their prime target. They hate us, they hate our country, they hate the liberties for which we stand. They want to destroy our way of life, so that freedom no longer has a home and a defender in this world. That leaves us only one option: to rise to America's defence, to take the fight directly to the enemy, and to accept no outcome but victory," he said.
Anti-war protesters clashed with police yesterday ahead of Mr Cheney's arrival in Australia, where prime minister John Howard has ruled out following Britain's example of cutting its troop numbers in Iraq.