The Associated Press

CONVENTION COVERAGE

• Bush: 'Pursue your dreams' • Ohio, brace for politicians • Swing voters like speech • Pataki praises 'guts' • Efforts to bring in women • Notes from New York • President Bush's remarks • Video of speech • Convention blog watch • Convention photo gallery • Election special section

NEW YORK - Gov. George Pataki praised President Bush on Thursday night as a man of "supreme guts and rightness," qualities he said are necessary to protect the country after Sept. 11.

The governor of New York thanked the nation for helping his state after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying on that day, "all Americans became New Yorkers."

"This great state rolled up its sleeves, looked terrorism straight in the face, and spat in its eye," Pataki said in his introduction of Bush.

And in a deft political touch, he singled out three states for their acts of compassion immediately after the attacks: Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oregon - all coveted swing states in the presidential election.

"America did not choose this war. But we have a president who chooses to win it," the three-term governor said.

Pataki took direct aim at Democratic presidential contender John Kerry's claim that the United States should go to war only when it must, not when it wants to fight.

"Well, excuse me, senator: The firefighters and cops who ran into those burning towers and died on Sept. 11th didn't want to go to war, they were heroes in a war they didn't even know existed," he said.

Pataki said al-Qaida badly miscalculated. "There's only one thing they didn't bank on. They didn't bank on George W. Bush," he said.

He repeatedly emphasized Bush as a determined leader who fulfilled his pledges to lower taxes, improve schools, and fight the terrorists.

"On Sept. 11, we had a president who didn't wring his hands and wonder what America had done wrong to deserve this attack," Pataki said.

Kerry, on the other hand, "has to Google his own name to find out where he stands," Pataki said.

Franks: 'Real thing'

NEW YORK - In a rousing warm-up for President Bush, retired Gen. Tommy Franks Thursday called his commander in chief "the real thing," a man who has the "courage and consistency" needed to lead America in the fight against terrorism.

"Citizens and friends, I've been with this president in tough, uncertain times," Franks, former commander of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, said at the GOP convention. "George W. Bush is the real thing. He is the real thing."

Franks said he's seen "courage and consistency" in Bush's eyes: "The courage to stand up to terrorists and the consistency necessary to beat them."

More than a dozen other retired generals and admirals also endorsed Bush.