XENIA, Ohio, Oct 16 (AFP) - Democratic challenger John Kerry accused President George W. Bush Saturday of pursuing an "ignore it, deny it, then try to hide it" strategy on issues from Iraq to the economy.
Kerry cranked his rhetoric another notch just over two weeks before what is shaping up as a neck-and-neck general election on November 2, stumping for votes in Ohio, a vital midwestern battleground state.
"When it comes to reality, George Bush has a simple strategy : Ignore it, deny it, then try to hide it," Kerry told an audience at a school in Xenia, southern Ohio.
He lambasted Bush's management of Iraq, pointing to a headline in a local newspaper relating more violence in the occupied country, and what he painted as the president's stubborn refusal to change course.
"We have got more terrorists there than we ever had there when we went in and more territory ceded to them, but George Bush just keeps saying we are making progress there," he said.
"This guy is never in doubt, but frequently in error."
Kerry's words may have struck home, as en route to Xenia his motorcade swept past lamp posts bearing yellow ribbons -- to honor members of the town's youth in the armed forces overseas.
The Massachusetts senator's increasingly populist strategy running up to the election is trying to tie what his campaign sees as Bush's indifference to mistakes in Iraq, to core issues on the domestic front, such as jobs and health care.
He invoked his political mentor, assassinated president John F. Kennedy's attitude to the failed 1961 CIA backed plot by Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro,
"John Kennedy, when the Bay of Pigs went wrong, looked the American people in the eye and said this is my responsibility, I take responsibility for this."
"This has been the zero accountability administration."