SUNRISE, Florida, Oct 16 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush signed a law Saturday aimed at battling global anti-Semitism, announcing the move as he courted Florida voters and attacked on Senator John Kerry as unfit to lead.
Bush approved the legislation aboard his Air Force One presidential airplane on his way to this key battleground state, which has a large Jewish population that campaign aides hope to win over come the November 2 election.
"This nation will keep watch; we will make sure that the ancient impulse of anti-Semitism never finds a home in the modern world," said the president, who carried the state in 2000 by just 537 votes.
Florida, which decided that national contest, boasts the third-largest Jewish population behind Israel and New York, and holds 27 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.
Bush held rallies later in West Palm Beach and in Daytona Beach, where he stumbled as he tried to debunk his Democratic rival's warnings that the Iraq war has so strained the US military that a compulsory draft may be needed.
"My opponent seems to be willing to say almost anything he thinks will benefit him politically," he said. "After standing on the stage, after the debates, I made it very plain we will not have an all-volunteer army."
"And yet this week..." he continued, before suddenly realizing the gaffe and shouting: "We will have an all-volunteer army."
"Let me restate that: We will not have a draft. No matter what my opponent tries to tell people and scare them, we will have an all-volunteer army," promised the president, who is known for frequent verbal stumbles.
"The only person talking about a draft is my opponent. The only politicians that supported a draft are democrats, and the best way to avoid a draft is to vote for me."
With polls showing the race deadlocked in Florida, aides said they hoped the president's staunch support for Israel and aggressive outreach would lead Jewish voters who usually vote for Democrats to cast ballots for him.
The law Bush, which signed seemed to be part of that effort, commits the US State Department to create a special office to track anti-Semitic acts throughout the world on a yearly basis, and rating governments' responses.
But the US State Department opposed the measure, saying the department already compiles such information in its annual report on human rights and religious freedom.
Bush also redoubled his attacks on Kerry as eager to raise taxes on middle-class Americans, favoring a government takeover of health care, and fickle on national security issues like Iraq.
The president sought to put a new gloss on his well-worn charge that Kerry "abandoned our troops in combat by voting against" an 87-billion-dollar spending package for Iraq and Afghanistan almost one year earlier.
Noting that Kerry voted for authorizing the use of force in Iraq before opposing the measure, Bush charged: "His contradictions call into question his credibility and his ability to lead our nation."
For months, Bush has quoted with relish Kerry's clumsy but accurate explanation that he voted in favor of the measure on procedural vote before voting against final passage.
"He said the whole thing was a complicated matter. There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat," said Bush, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd.
Kerry -- who voted in favor of the 87 billion dollars on a procedural vote, but opposed its final passage -- has acknowledged that he explained his decision poorly but defended the move by saying he wanted some of the reconstruction aid to oil-rich Iraq to be in the form of loans.
His campaign has noted that Bush, who says "there's nothing complicated" about the funding measure, threatened to veto the spending bill if aid to Iraq were not in the form of grants.
Anticipating Bush's attack, Kerry spokesman Phil Singer fired back Saturday that it was also the anniversary of the leak of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's memorandum warning of a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, was also campaigning in Florida, accompanied with wife Elizabeth.