With one month to go in a tightening White House race, an invigorated Democratic Sen. John Kerry stepped up his attacks on President George W. Bush's economic record on Sunday and raised new questions about whether the White House misled the country into war in Iraq. Bush administration officials defended the Iraq invasion and disputed a New York Times report claiming they ignored doubts about whether high-strength aluminum tubes seized in 2001 were destined to be used for a revived Iraqi nuclear program.

At a campaign stop in Ohio, Kerry said the Times report “raises serious questions about whether or not the administration was open and honest in making the case for the war in Iraq” and said Bush similarly avoided the truth on key economic issues. “This is a time where I think all too often the administration also chooses to avoid the facts and the truth,” he said. “Not just in the issues about how we went to war -- the intelligence, what intelligence we had or didnt have -- but just look around you in the economy of our country.”

The exchanges came at the start of a week featuring two debates where Kerry and running mate John Edwards will try to build on their momentum from Thursday's first face-to-face encounter with Bush, which polls showed was a clear win for Kerry.

A Newsweek poll showed Kerry climbed to a two-point lead in the White House race after his performance in the debate.

Kerry has turned to domestic issues after the debate, arguing in economically battered Ohio that Bush had burdened US taxpayers with policies that helped companies ship jobs and tax revenues offshore.

“This administration, every time it's had an opportunity to make a choice for you, whether it's health care, or prescription drugs or schools ... they've made a choice that helps the powerful, the people who are most helped already,” the Massachusetts senator said in Austintown, Ohio.

Kerry also took a swipe at Bush over the New York Times report that administration officials did not disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists and sometimes overstated intelligence assessments about whether Iraq was acquiring the aluminum tubes to develop nuclear weapons. “These are questions the president must face, these are the questions that a president has to answer fully to the American people and to the troops,”Kerry said.

<B>'“Tenets Fault” </B>

Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, defended her claim in 2002 about former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities and laid the blame for faulty intelligence on departed CIA Director George Tenet.

“The director of central intelligence believed that the centrifuge part for these tubes ... were a part of a procurement effort for a reconstituted nuclear weapons program,” Rice said on ABC's “This Week.” She said she was aware there was a debate about some of the pre-war evidence against Saddam, but she said intelligence officials deemed the overall threat to be credible.

“I stand by to this day the correctness of the decision to take seriously an intelligence assessment that Saddam Hussein would likely have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade if you didn't do something,” she said.

Dan Bartlett, White House director of communications, said on CBS's “Face the Nation” that “despite the fact that some had different opinions about the technical use of these, it was the director of the central intelligence and others who said we believe this to be the case.”

Iraq is certain to be a key topic at Tuesday's debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards in Cleveland, Ohio.

Cheney, a key architect of the administration's Iraqi policy and a prime defender of the war, gets a second chance to state the administration's case on Iraq after Bush's performance, which polls showed had not impressed voters.

On Friday, Bush and Kerry meet for their second debate in St. Louis, Missouri, in a town hall format where undecided voters compose the questions and the topics are unlimited, allowing a discussion on domestic issues.

The third and final presidential debate, on Oct. 13, in Tempe, Arizona, will focus strictly on domestic policy, which Democrats once hoped to make the focus of the campaign before violence in Iraq overshadowed everything.

Bush took a day off the campaign trail on Sunday, attending church and going on a bicycle ride. Democrats were heartened by Kerry's debate performance and hoped it would ease lingering doubts about his abilities. But Republicans said the polls still showed Bush leading on key issues.

“President Bush still has a lead in the big issues on terrorism, on Iraq, leadership, and these are the issues which the president is going to get re-elected on,” Bartlett said on Fox News Sunday.