At a Des Moines rally, presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., aimed some thinly-disguised remarks at the former First Lady, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, according to a report in the U.K. Telegraph.
"We can’t afford a politics that’s all about terrorism and ripping people down rather than lifting a country up," he said. "We can’t afford a politics based on fear that leaves politicians to think the only way they can look tough on national security is to vote and act and talk just like George W Bush."
Polls indicate that Sen. Clinton might have edged just ahead of the junior senator from Illinois in the past week.
Now campaigning in Iowa for his wife, Bill Clinton, has raised the spectre of another September 11 style attack and stated that only his wife had the experience to deal with a terrorist atrocity.
Obama fired back by suggesting that this was like the tactics of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in 2004 -- and amounted to "using 9/11 as a way to scare up votes".
Yesterday, at a rally in rural Perry attended by about 250 people, Obama made the same charge.