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Cheney Assails Democrats' `Competence' Against Terror (Update1)

March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Democrats have a ``sorry record'' on national security and suggested the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq they have proposed would fulfill the hopes of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden.

``The leaders of the Democratic Party have decided to run on the theme of competence,'' Cheney said in Orlando at a fund- raising event for U.S. Representative Ric Keller, a Florida Republican. ``If they're competent to fight this war, then I ought to be singing on American Idol.''

Cheney was responding to statements by the Democratic National Committee, which has called the Bush administration and its Iraq war plan ``dangerously incompetent.'' U.S. Representative John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, and some other party lawmakers have called for the U.S. to begin a withdrawal from Iraq.

``Issues of national security will clearly be at the top of the agenda as the mid-term elections near,'' Cheney said, according to a transcript of the remarks his office distributed. ``The president and I welcome the debate.''

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