BOSTON, Massachusetts, July 26 (AFP) - Former president Bill Clinton on Monday urged Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry not to copy the Bush-bashing tactics of some of his supporters.
"The most important thing is that he not fall into that," Clinton told NBC television in an interview aired a few hours before Clinton was to speak at the opening of the Democratic Party convention here.
The two-term president said there was nothing Kerry could do about the tactics used by some of his supporters against the Republican incumbent George W. Bush.
"I don't think there's anything we can do about it. And the bitterness is really rooted in the reaction to the 2000 election, where every Democrat who didn't support the Homeland Security bill, just as it was written, was a supporter of Saddam Hussein."
Clinton said Kerry had to use the convention, where he will be officially named Thursday as the party candidate for the November 2 election, to show the US nation who he is.
Many analysts have highlighted how Kerry is still a largely unknown figure in his home country.
"He needs to close the deal with the American people," said Clinton. "I would say this is likely to be a fairly close election, but on today's facts, he has the advantage. And we need to use this convention to close the deal."
According to Clinton said the domestic policies of the Bush administration and ways to improve national security and combat terrorism after the official report into the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington were likely to dominate the election.
Clinton's administration was criticised in the report alongside that of his successor.
But the ex-president said "I think we didn't have all the tools we needed to fight.
"We had intelligence, law enforcement, and military. But what we needed was a different sort of intelligence, that is, the ability to permeate their cells.
"We prevented a lot of attacks. But the problem with terror, you don't get credit for saves. It's not baseball. We prevented attacks on the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the LA Airport, other attacks."
Clinton also said US forces should not be hastily withdrawn from Iraq.
"If we can make this work, we would all be better off," he said.
"I would hate to see, having lost over 900 American lives, 70 percent of them after the mission was declared accomplished (by President Bush), I'd hate to see us walk away from it, if there's a reasonable chance to make it work."