St Louis, Oct 03: Under intense scrutiny, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin stood her ground on Thursday night against a vastly more experienced Joe Biden, debating the economy, energy and global warming, then challenging him on Iraq, "especially with your son in the National Guard."

The Alaska governor also noted that Biden had once said Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wasn`t ready to be commander in chief, "and I know again that you opposed the move that he made to try to cut off funding for the troops and I respect you for that."

Biden responded that McCain, too, had voted against funding, and said the Republican presidential candidate had been "dead wrong on the fundamental issues relating to the conduct of the war."

The clash over Iraq was the most personal, and pointed, of the 90-minute debate in which Palin repeatedly cast herself as a non-Washington politician, part of a "team of mavericks" that was ready to bring change to a country demanding it.

From the opening moments of the debate, Biden sought to make McCain out as a straight-ahead successor to an unpopular President Bush. "He voted four out of five times for George Bush`s budget, which put us a half-trillion dollars in debt and over USD 4 trillion in debt since he got here," he said of McCain.

Palin merely accused Biden of reciting the past rather than looking to the future. "Americans are cravin` that straight talk" that McCain offers, she said.

Bureau Report