As U.S. Sen. John Kerry spends the day warming up for Friday night's second debate with President George W. Bush -- the president is expected to renew his tough attacks on Kerry on domestic and national security issues.

Bush will be speaking Thursday in Wisconsin and is expected to stress once again that a Kerry presidency would be dangerous to both the nation's economic future and national security.

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OCT. 13 DEBATE RULES Location: Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona Length of debate: 90 minutes, starting at 9 p.m. ET Topics: Economic and domestic policy Moderator: "Face the Nation" anchor Bob Schieffer Format: Candidates will stand at podiums, with no audience participation. The moderator will ask at least 16 questions. A candidate will get two minutes to respond to a question; the other candidate will get 90 seconds to comment on the question or to respond to his rival's answer.

The revamped speech is part of an effort to blunt Kerry's momentum after the president's lackluster showing in last week's debate.

Another round of rehearsals is set for Kerry as he preps for Friday's town-hall style debate in St. Louis.

Kerry campaign spokesman Mike McCurry said Kerry's getting increasingly comfortable with the give-and-take of the format, in which voters who say they are undecided will ask the questions.

The war in Iraq promises to be a hot topic in Friday's town hall meeting -- just as it was during the first debate between Bush and Kerry.

Since last Thursday, two issues have surfaced that will most likely be addressed.

On Wednesday, the chief U.S. weapons inspector said there was no evidence Iraq made any weapons of mass destruction after 1991. But it also said that Saddam Hussein was intent on getting international sanctions lifted so that he could restart his weapons program.

Democrats have used the report to back up their contention that invading Iraq was a mistake.

Faced with the harshly critical report, Bush conceded Thursday that Iraq did not have the stockpiles of banned weapons he had warned of before the invasion last year, but insisted that "we were right to take action" against Saddam Hussein.

"The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away."

Vice President Dick Cheney echoed those sentiments during an address, saying that the report shows that "delay, defer, wait wasn't an option."

The report states that Saddam's weapons program had deteriorated since the 1991 Gulf War and did not pose a threat to the world in 2003, but also said Saddam's main goal was the removal of international sanctions.

"As soon as the sanctions were lifted he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.

The vice president said the report concluded that the United Nations' "Fuel for Food" program was "corrupted by Saddam Hussein. There were suggestions employees of the United Nations were part of the scheme as well."

Cheney's comments reflect a GOP strategy to use portions of the report, including abuses of Iraq's "fuel for food" program, to try to move discussion away from the central conclusions on the absence of weapons of mass destruction.

John Edwards, the Democratic nominee for vice president, said the way Cheney described the chief U.S. weapons inspector's findings on Iraq is "amazing."

Edwards told a crowd in New Jersey that the vice president is using "convoluted logic."

Cheney and President Bush "need to recognize that the Earth is actually round and the sun is rising in the east," Edwards said.

During Friday's debate, Kerry is also expected to seize on comments made earlier this week by former U.S. administrator Paul Bremer, who said America did not have enough troops on the ground following Hussein's overthrow.

The town meeting-style debate will be held at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., and will be moderated by Charles Gibson, co-anchor of ABC's Good Morning America.

Under rules agreed to by both presidential campaigns:

Prior to the debate, audience members, selected from people who are identified as "soft Bush" and "soft Kerry" supporters by the Gallup organization, will submit their questions in writing to the moderator.
The moderator approves and selects all questions to be posed by the audience members to the candidates.
Non-reviewed questions will not be permitted and follow-up questions are prohibited.

According to several new polls, the most recent of which was released Thursday, Kerry has a slim lead over Bush on the eve of their second debate.

Among 944 likely voters surveyed in the AP-Ipsos Public Affairs poll, the Kerry-Edwards ticket led Bush-Cheney 50 percent to 46 percent. The race was tied at 47 percent among all voters.

The poll shows Kerry gaining ground on all issues, with fewer voters now now saying Bush is the man best able to protect the nation.

Bush held a small lead last month.

Nearly three-quarters of likely voters said they watched or heard last week's debate. While 39 percent said they felt better about Kerry after it, only 8 percent came away with a more favorable view of Bush.