Dean Launches New Assaults on Iowa Rivals

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean launched a fresh assault on his Washington-based rivals on Tuesday, airing a television ad in Iowa condemning their support for the Iraq war.

Emphasizing his outsider status in the final days of a tight race in Iowa, Dean attacked Richard Gephardt, John Kerry and John Edwards by name in the ad for supporting a congressional resolution authorizing the war.

Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, fired back quickly, saying Dean was adopting "old style negative attack politics" down the stretch before the Iowa caucuses on Monday, the first big prize in the Democratic presidential race for the right to challenge President Bush.

"Where did the Washington Democrats stand on the war?" the narrator of the Dean ad asks. "Dick Gephardt wrote the resolution to authorize war. John Kerry and John Edwards both voted for the war. Then Dick Gephardt voted to spend another $87 billion on Iraq."

"Howard Dean has a different view," the ad says.

The advertisement was the latest sign of a strategy change for Dean, who on Monday dropped his attempts to stay above the fray on the campaign trail and returned to the fiery attacks on his rivals, the war and the Washington establishment that initially propelled him to the top of the Democratic pack.

The change came as a Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby tracking poll showed Dean in a tight race with Gephardt, the congressman from neighboring Missouri who won the state during his first presidential bid in 1988.

The former Vermont governor widened his lead over Gephardt by two points in the latest poll released on Tuesday, giving him a 28 percent to 23 percent lead six days before the caucuses.