WASHINGTON, Oct 31 (AFP) - A menacing message from terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden has added fresh kindling to the sense of fear and anxiety that has pervaded American life since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and set the tone of the presidential election campaign.
Bin Laden's address to the American people was the first video appearance by the world's most wanted man in more than a year and came just days before voters cast their ballots in an election that has been dominated by national security issues.
His re-emergence was a potent and pointed reminder of the terrorist threat that has cast a shadow over the United States for the past three years, initiating Americans in the use of color-coded national alerts and redefining their notion of homeland security.
It also fleshed out, in the most literal way, one of the core themes of the election campaign: that another terrorist attack is a real possibility and that the choice of President George W. Bush or his challenger, John Kerry, is a choice between who would keep America safer.
In a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in early October, terrorism topped the list of voter concerns, just beating out another source of growing anxiety, the war in Iraq. The November 2 ballot will be the first US election to be held in wartime since Vietnam three decades ago.
Although bin Laden's message carried no explicit threat of a fresh terror strike, the Al-Qaeda leader warned that the only way for Americans to avoid a repeat of the September 11 attacks was a change in US policy towards the Muslim world.
The impact of the video on an election that looks set to go to the wire has been difficult to assess.
While his appearance may lend weight to Kerry's repeated charge that Bush "took his eye off the ball" by diverting resources from the bin Laden manhunt to the war in Iraq, it could also benefit Bush by refocusing attention on terrorism -- an issue on which the president regularly polls higher than his challenger.
While some of the traumatic wounds inflicted by the September 11 attacks have healed over the past three years, the fear of another attack has remained close to the surface, buoyed by spikes in alert levels and large-scale security exercises simulating a terrorist-induced catastrophe.
Even though no domestic attack has transpired, the horrors of terrorist violence have still been brought home by events like the train bombings in Madrid and the massacre of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia.
At the same time, US citizens living overseas have received repeated State Department warnings to be vigilant amid intelligence reports of possible attacks by Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups on US interests abroad.
And then there is the war in Iraq which, aside from the rising death toll among American soldiers, has witnessed a deadly and highly graphic sideshow of kidnappings and videoed beheadings of civilian hostages.
The resulting culture of fear has been fed by the election campaign, with both candidates staking their claim to be the best equipped to keep America safe and, in the process, painting a dire picture of the consequences if their opponent is elected.
Earlier this month, the Bush campaign released a new ad in which a female narrator accuses Kerry in hushed tones of being dangerously weak on national security, while a pack of wolves prowls menacingly onscreen.
Kerry, meanwhile, has warned that a second Bush term would result in a Vietnam-like quagmire in Iraq and raised the spectre -- despite strong presidential denials -- of a military draft.
And the comments of other senior Democrats have verged on the apocalyptic.
"A mushroom cloud over any American city is the ultimate nightmare and the risk is all too great," veteran Senator Edward Kennedy said in a recent speech. "The war in Iraq has made the mushroom cloud more likely."
Amidst all the dire threats, warnings and predictions, the American public, sometimes to its own confusion, has continually been encouraged to adopt a "business as usual" approach to daily life -- a message that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge repeated in the wake of the bin Laden message.
"Our effort nationwide down to the local level to enhance security is ongoing," Ridge said. "We are far safer today than we've ever been before and we'll continue ... to add security so that we can enjoy being Americans, living in the greatest country on the face of the earth."

10/31/2004 02:12 GMT - AFP