2008 US Presidential Election.

WATERLOO, Iowa (AFP) - Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) was taking to the ice-bound campaign trail, a day after launching his 2008 White House bid with a vow to lead a generational drive to purge the cynicism from US politics.

The charismatic 45-year-old senator opened his quest for the Democratic nomination in Illinois, invoking anti-slavery icon Abraham Lincoln as he set his sights on a historic goal — to become the first black US president.

Obama demanded an end to the “tragic” war in Iraq and said he felt a call of destiny to transform his nation.

“Let’s be the generation that ends poverty in America,” Obama told a outdoor crowd of thousands in frigid temperatures in the midwestern city of Springfield, former president Lincoln’s hometown.

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SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) announced his bid for president Saturday, a black man evoking Abraham Lincoln’s ability to unite a nation and a Democrat portraying himself as a fresh face capable of leading a new generation.

“Let us transform this nation,” he told thousands shivering in the cold at the campaign’s kickoff.

Obama, 45, is the youngest candidate in the Democrats’ 2008 primary field dominated by front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and filled with more experienced lawmakers. In an address from the state capital where he began his elective career 10 years ago, the first-term U.S. senator sought to distinguish himself as a staunch opponent of the Iraq war and a White House hopeful whose lack of political experience is an asset.

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CONCORD, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday attacked President George W. Bush for “arrogance and incompetence” in Iraq but faced tough questions over her own vote to authorize the war.

On her first visit in a decade to the state that helps kick off the 2008 White House race, Clinton told voters in New Hampshire that Iraq was a challenge because of “the arrogance and incompetence of our administration in Washington.”

At a town hall meeting of about 300 people in the city of Berlin, the New York senator was asked by one participant to repudiate her 2002 Senate vote for a measure that cleared the way for the March 2003 invasion.

“Knowing what we know now, I would never have voted for it,” she responded. “I gave him the authority to send inspectors back in to determine the truth. I said this is not a vote to authorize pre-emptive war.”

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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Republicans Mitt Romney and Sen. Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record) promoted their presidential campaigns before nearly 3,000 party activists at the Michigan GOP convention Saturday.

Romney reminded the crowd that he grew up sharing the Automotive News each morning with his father, George, who headed American Motors Corp. before serving as Michigan’s governor from 1963 to 1969.

The younger Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said his father brought many of the lessons he learned from business to the governorship.

“He got Michigan moving again,” Romney said, before running through his stands in opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage and in favor of tight controls on illegal immigration. “It’s time for Republican principles to come back to Michigan again.”

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CONCORD, N.H. - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton faced questions Saturday from New Hampshire voters skeptical about her stand on the Iraq war, including one who demanded that she repudiate her 2002 Senate vote to send U.S. troops into battle.

In her first presidential campaign visit to the early voting state, Clinton focused on her plans to revive struggling small-town economies, provide universal health care and make college more affordable. But at a town hall meeting in rural Berlin and at a boisterous gathering of some 3,000 people in the state capital, Concord, Clinton was peppered with questions about Iraq.

Most of the questions were cordial, and Clinton was loudly cheered when she repeated her pledge to end the war if she is elected president next year. But several attendees challenged the New York senator to explain how she could reconcile her sharp criticism of the war with her vote to authorize the original invasion.

“Aren’t you trying to have it both ways?” asked a man in Concord.

Clinton acknowledged “a great deal of frustration and anger and outrage” over the war, and said she was working hard in the Senate to pass legislation capping troop levels in Iraq. She also vowed to try to bring to a vote a resolution disapproving of President Bush’s planned troop increase.

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SPRINGFIELD, United States (AFP) - Senator Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) launched “an improbable quest” to become America’s first black president, audaciously invoking Abraham Lincoln, the US president who ended slavery.

“I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America,” Obama told a crowd of thousands in temperatures of minus 11 degrees Celsius (13 Fahrenheit) in Lincoln’s hometown.

“You didn’t come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be,” said the Illinois senator, 45, muscling his way into a packed Democratic field already dominated by New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

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Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record)’s positions on a sampling of issues:

_Abortion: Favors abortion rights. As Illinois lawmaker, opposed restrictions on public financing of abortions.

_Global warming: Co-sponsored bill that would set mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions and raise energy costs. Plan would require emissions to return to 2004 levels by 2012 and to 1990 levels by 2020.

_Health care: Wants universal coverage by 2012; details not specified.

_Immigration: Voted to give illegal immigrants a route to citizenship after they pay fines and back taxes, learn English, satisfy a work requirement and pass a criminal background check. Voted for building a fence along Mexican border, and toughening requirements that citizens be given preference for jobs over guest workers.

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SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) plans to stand outside Illinois’ Old State Capitol on Saturday, a building indelibly linked to Abraham Lincoln, and tell the world about his 2008 presidential plans.

In a video preview announcement on his presidential exploratory committee’s Web site, Obama said he’s humbled by the enormity of the task ahead and urged supporters to get involved. “Tomorrow, we begin a great journey. A journey to take our country back and fundamentally change the nature of our politics,” Obama said.

For Obama, it will be the start of a long weekend of rallies and events that will take him from Springfield to Iowa and then on to Chicago before he wraps up Monday in New Hampshire.

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NASHUA, N.H. - Republican Mike Huckabee said Friday that marriage shouldn’t be treated as an experiment in response to questions about whether Vice President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter should have the right to wed.

The former Arkansas governor, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, said heterosexual marriages face enough challenges without adding new configurations to the mix.

“Taking on a new definition doesn’t make sense right now,” Huckabee said in an interview with The Associated Press after speaking to business leaders in New Hampshire.

Mary Cheney, 37, announced in December that she and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, were starting a family. She has not said how the child was conceived. The baby is due in the spring and will be the vice president’s sixth grandchild.

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LONDON (AFP) - Former US vice-president Al Gore reiterated here that he does not intend to run for president in 2008 — though he did not entirely rule out doing so further in the future.

Gore, now an environmental campaigner, ran for president in 2000 against the incumbent George W. Bush, but lost the race amid a bitter dispute over electoral votes in the state of Florida.

He said: “I don’t have plans to be a candidate again and though I haven’t… completely ruled out any possibility of running at some point in the future I don’t expect to and cannot perceive circumstances in which I would.”

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