Just days before what Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) calls the potentially “decisive” day in the Democratic nomination fight, the senator and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) intensified their war of words.

With polls showing tight races in both of the March 4 voting states of Ohio and Texas, Clinton and Obama kicked off the week with an intense exchange over

A Monday morning headline on the Drudge Report claimed that “Clinton staffers circulate ‘dressed’ Obama,” complete with a picture of Obama in something similar to a traditional Somali outfit. Somalia has a heavy Muslim population.

“The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya,” Drudge reported.

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer was asked about the picture at a scheduled breakfast with reporters and Clinton adviser Harold Ickes. He promptly derided the “esteemed” reporters in the room for allowing Matt Drudge to act as their “respective assignment editors.”

Singer and other Clinton officials said throughout the day they were not aware of where the picture came from, and that they did not send it to the site. But Singer also kept the heat on the press, arguing that the media scrutiny paid to Obama has been “woefully inadequate” — the same point underscored by Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman, on an afternoon conference call.

Wolfson said that campaign aides, donors and supporters share the “commonly held view” that there has been a “double-standard” in the ways in which the media have covered the two campaigns.

The Obama campaign, seizing on the moment, unleashed a harsh response to the so-far unsourced report, blasting the Clinton campaign for engaging in “the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election.”

“This is part of a disturbing pattern that led her county chairs to resign in Iowa, her campaign chairman to resign in New Hampshire, and it’s exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world,” David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, said in a statement.

The Clinton campaign continues to say it is unaware of where the pictures came from, and Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams charged that Obama should not have derided the traditional garb as “divisive.”

“If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed,” Williams said. “Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.”

The dust-up over the picture highlighted an intense day in the nomination battle that saw both campaigns holding several conference calls with reporters as they seek to gain an advantage in the crucial states that vote next week.

Ickes, like others around the Clinton campaign as well as the senator in last week’s debate, did not sound optimistic when asked about the possibility of carrying on with the campaign if Clinton loses Texas and Ohio.

“I think if she loses Ohio and Texas, Mrs. Clinton will have to make her decision as to whether she moves forward or not,” Ickes said as he spoke at the Monday breakfast, which was sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.

In similar vein, former President Bill Clinton was quoted last week as saying that his wife cannot afford to lose either state.

After a string of 10 victories by Obama, the Clinton campaign has been fighting an increasingly fatalistic media environment.

But Ickes and other Clinton advisers have repeatedly said they are in the race for the long haul.

Ickes also argued that the race is still “a long way from over.”

Offering the assembled reporters a healthy dose of math to support his belief that the race continues to be “wide open,” Ickes pointed out that 16 states and territories still have not cast votes, and said that the campaigns will be close to even in the delegate count by the time Puerto Rico has voted in early June.

“There is no compelling reason to shut the process down,” Ickes said.