Bush: National security most important issue
President adds stop in Pennsylvania to woo Democratic voters
 |  President Bush speaks to supporters at a campaign rally at Youngstown Warren Regional Airport in Ohio Wednesday. |
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 Bush takes more heat on missing Iraqi explosives.
 CNN's Bill Hemmer explores the chance of another Election 2000.
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(CNN) -- President Bush will push his message in Michigan again Thursday in hopes of winning over conservative Democrats who could deliver victory on Election Day.
Bush will travel in the afternoon to Ohio and Pennsylvania to shore up support in those crucial battleground states.
Bush is also getting ready to campaign with Republican heavy-hitter Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Friday in Ohio. The California governor will appear with Bush in Columbus, Ohio, where the annual Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition is held.
Bush told voters Wednesday in Ohio that enhancing national security was the most important issue facing voters this election and was a good reason to re-elect him president.
"All progress on every other issue depends on the safety of our citizens," Bush said to the crowd in Findlay, Ohio.
"Americans are going to the polls during a time of war and during a time of threats unlike any we have faced before."
He said terrorists would remain on the defensive during his second term as president.
During an earlier campaign stop in southern Pennsylvania, Bush responded to fierce criticism by his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, over the administration's handling of reports of missing explosives from a weapons depot in Iraq.
It was reported Monday that the interim Iraqi government earlier this month told the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog organization, that 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were missing from a storage facility south of Baghdad.
In a letter dated October 10, the interim government blamed "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security" during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. (Full story)
The explosives, considered powerful enough to demolish buildings and detonate nuclear warheads, were well known before the war and had been sealed by U.N. inspectors, the IAEA said. (Full story)
Kerry has hammered away at the president for three days since the issue surfaced.
Bush called Kerry's statements "wild charges" and claimed the Democratic candidate was turning the reports into a political issue.
"Kerry seemed surprised this week to have have found out that Iraq is a dangerous place," Bush told a crowd in Lititz in Lancaster County. "But, after all, that's why we're there."
"The senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign policy adviser admits, 'We do not know the facts.' Think about that," Bush said.
"The senator is denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts. Unfortunately, that's part of the pattern of saying anything to get elected."
The Associated Press reported Kerry adviser Richard Holbrooke -- who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton -- as telling Fox News in an interview that "the U.N. inspectors had told the American military this was a major depot. ... I don't know what happened. I do know one thing -- in most administrations the buck stops in the Oval Office."
Bush said that the military was investigating what happened, including the possibility the material was moved before U.S. troops entered Baghdad and toppled Saddam Hussein's regime on April 9, 2003.
Bush said Wednesday that troops seized or destroyed 400,000 tons of munitions at more than 1,000 sites in Iraq.
"This investigation is important and ongoing, and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief," the president added.
"If Senator Kerry had his way ... Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives, and could have shared them with our terrorist enemies."
Campaigning Wednesday in Sioux City, Iowa, Kerry said of the controversy, "Instead of coming clean with the American people, the administration has blamed the bad news on the International Atomic Energy Agency and even blamed the United States military -- and even blamed the media itself.
"All the while, the White House took no responsibility for creating the situation where these weapons could go missing in the first place."
The senator said that the Bush administration "first tried to convince the American people that this was not a big deal -- not a big deal that 380 tons of high-grade explosives were now likely in the hands of terrorists and insurgents."
"Vice President [Dick] Cheney, who is becoming the chief minister of disinformation, he echoed that it's not the administration's fault, and he even criticized those who raised the subject," Kerry said.
Although Bush lost Pennsylvania in 2000 to Al Gore, he received nearly 61,000 more votes in Lancaster County than the Democrat. Pennsylvania has 21 electoral votes.
On Wednesday, the president made repeated pleas for the votes of Democrats while accompanied by Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who blasted his own party in a speech to the Republican National Convention.
"He's joined by millions of other Democrats across the country who are supporting our ticket," Bush said.
"I want to speak directly to the Democrats. I'm a proud Republican, but I believe my policies appeal to many Democrats," Bush said.
"In fact, my opponent is running away from some of the great traditions of the Democratic Party."
He noted Democrats who have led the country in times of crisis such as Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.
"President Kennedy said the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God," Bush said. "Many Democrats look at my opponent and wonder where that great presidential tradition has gone."
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
