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Palin says Obama friendly with terrorists

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-05 10:45

ENGLEWOOD, Colorado -- US Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin accused Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday of "palling around with terrorists," in the latest sign the US election campaign is turning increasingly nasty.

Sarah Palin responds to cheers at a rally at St. Louis University's Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, Missouri on October 02, 2008. [Agencies]

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The comment by Palin, whose running mate, John McCain, is battling Obama for US president in the November 4 election, was dismissed by the Obama campaign as "gutter politics" and came shortly after the McCain campaign called the US senator from Illinois a liar.

With polls showing McCain trailing Obama in many battleground states, including several won by Republicans in the 2004 election, Palin said, "There is a time when it's necessary to take the gloves off and that time is right now."

Speaking at a fundraiser in Englewood, Colorado, she launched an assault on Obama just days after both candidates urged Congress to set aside partisan politics to pass a $700 billion financial rescue package in a bid to revive credit markets.

"Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin said of Obama, also calling him an embarrassment.

Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam War-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.

Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said, "Today, the McCain-Palin team took their discredited, dishonorable campaign one desperate step further, announcing that they were going to try 'turning a page on this financial crisis' and launching more personal attacks on Senator Obama."

"Instead of offering solutions for working Americans and families struggling through a failing economy, they have offered more gutter politics and false attacks," he said in a statement.

Speaking at a fundraiser in Asheville, North Carolina, on Saturday night, Obama made no direct reference to Palin's remarks but told supporters he would continue to run a positive campaign.

"Most of all (people) are tired of the politics of distraction, the politics of division ... that says that the way to win an election is simply to run nasty ads and lie about their opponents," he said.

Obama served with Ayers on the board of a foundation in Chicago, and has said he was only 8 years old when the Weather Underground committed its best-known bombing. He has also noted that former US President Bill Clinton pardoned two members of the group during the last days of his presidency.

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