The president, speaking at the White House with Ms. Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, criticized Russia and called on it to "keep its word and act to end this crisis." Mr. Bush said that a transport plane with medical supplies was already on its way to Georgia, and that American air and naval forces would carry out the aid mission. And he said pointedly that Russia must not interfere with aid arriving in Georgia by air, land or water.

But while Mr. Bush said the United States "stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia and insists that its sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected," his remarks contained no hint of an American military role in Georgia, other than providing humanitarian assistance. However, minutes after Mr. Bush's comments, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia characterized the import of the American aid as "definitely an American military presence" and called it a "turning point."

In a telephone interview, he said of Mr. Bush's statement: "We were unhappy with the initial actions of the American officials, because they were perceived by the Russians as green lines basically. But this one was very strong." "What I expected specifically from America was to secure our airport and to secure our seaports," he went on, concluding that the American presence would do so. "The main thing now is that the Georgian Tbilisi airport will be permanently under control."

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt. The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.

Bush's rating has worsened amid "collapsing optimism about the economy," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies presidential approval. Record gas prices and a wave of home foreclosures have fueled voter angst.

Bush also holds the record for the other extreme: the highest approval rating of any president in Gallup's history. In September 2001, in the days after the 9/11 attacks, Bush's approval spiked to 90%. In another record, the percentage of Americans who say the invasion of Iraq was a mistake reached a new high, 63%, in the latest poll. Assessments of Bush's presidency are harsh. By 69%-27%, those polled say Bush's tenure in general has been a failure, not a success.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative. In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recount the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Monday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

*****

Plame maintains the White House quietly outed her to reporters. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said the leak was retribution for his public criticism of the Iraq war. The accusation dogged the administration and made Plame a cause celebre among many Democrats.

McClellan's book, "What Happened," isn't due out until April, and the excerpt released Monday was merely a teaser. It doesn't get into detail about how Bush and Cheney were involved or reveal what happened behind the scenes.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself.

The White House demanded in 2004 that the Justice Department approve a secret national security program without allowing the ailing attorney general, "feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed," to discuss the matter with top advisers, according to the FBI director's personal notes. The partially censored notes from FBI chief Robert S. Mueller, dated March 12, 2004, describe a distraught and feeble Attorney General John Ashcroft in his hospital room just moments after being visited by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card, the president's chief of staff at the time.

Mueller's account backs up earlier descriptions of the dispute over whether to continue the program despite Justice Department concerns about its legality. Last month, Mueller told a House committee that the clash was about the government's warrantless wiretapping; Gonzales and the White House denied that and said it was about other intelligence activities. "Saw AG," Mueller wrote in his timed log of the events on the evening of March 10, 2004. "Janet Ashcroft in the room. AG is feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed." Ashcroft was in the hospital with pancreatitis.

Before seeing Ashcroft, Mueller met with then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey at the hospital about 7:40 p.m., the notes indicate. Comey said Ashcroft told Card and Gonzales that he would not approve the classified terrorist surveillance program, which was set to expire the next day. "The AG then reviewed for them the legal concerns relating to the program," Mueller's notes show. "The AG also told them that he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of the WH."

*****

The notes were released by the House Judiciary Committee, which had asked Mueller to hand them over when he testified in late July. The committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, said the notes prove the White House tried to strong-arm the ailing Ashcroft. "Particularly disconcerting is the new revelation that the White House sought Mr. Ashcroft's authorization for the surveillance program, yet refused to let him seek the advice he needed on the program," Conyers, D-Mich., said in a statement.

At the time, Mr. Gonzales was the White House counsel, and Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from gall bladder surgery. That March night, Mr. Gonzales went to the hospital room with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff. In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was "intelligence activities" under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program.

But Mr. Mueller contradicted that version of events today, several hours after four Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself before Congress. Mr. Mueller was testifying at an F.B.I. oversight hearing when he was questioned by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas. "Did you have an understanding that the conversation was on T.S.P.?" the Congresswoman asked, using the shorthand for terrorist surveillance program. "I had an understanding the discussion was on an N.S.A. program, yes," Mr. Mueller replied, using the abbreviation for the National Security Agency. A moment later, he added that the discussion was on the warrantless eavesdropping program "that has been much discussed, yes."

The conflict in accounts could be significant, because Mr. Gonzales's critics have accused him of trying to convey the false impression that the N.S.A. program had spawned no serious dissension within the Bush administration. But former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has testified that Justice Department lawyers were balking at recertifying the program early in 2004 and that he thought Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card rushed to the hospital to persuade Mr. Ashcroft, who was not at full capacity, to overlook his own objections to the program.

Mr. Mueller said that after receiving a call from Mr. Comey he went to the hospital, arriving shortly after Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card left, and that after he spoke with Mr. Ashcroft he understood that the N.S.A. program was indeed the focus of the dramatic bedside encounter. There have been repeated instances in which lawmakers have questioned Mr. Gonzales's competence and his recollection of events. But today's developments seemed to mark a shift toward suggestions that he actually committed crimes in testifying before Congress.

The Democrat, a Vietnam veteran, lost an effort in the Senate last week to require specified periods of home time for troops deployed in the war, his bill winning majority support but falling short of the 60 votes needed to proceed. He took sharp objection when Graham asserted that high re-enlistment numbers are a vote of confidence in the Iraq policy by the troops.

"This is one thing I really take objection to - may I speak? - is politicians who try to put their political views into the mouths of soldiers," Webb said over his opponent's interruptions. He placed his hand briefly on Graham's back, then jerked his thumb in the Republican's direction.

"Have you been to Iraq?" Graham demanded. "I've covered two wars as a correspondent," Webb said. "I have been to Afghanistan as a journalist." Graham: "Have you been to Iraq and talked to the soldiers?" Webb: "You know, you've never been to Iraq, Lindsey." The Republican pointed out he's been there seven times. "You know," Webb said dismissively, "you can see the dog and pony shows. That's what congressman do. "Why don't you go look at the polls, Lindsey, instead of the seven or eight people that are put in front of you when you make your congressional visit?"

Among military members and their immediate families who responded to a national New York Times/CBS News poll in May, two-thirds said things were going badly, compared with just over half, about 53 percent, a year ago. Fewer than half of the families and military members said the United States did the right thing in invading Iraq. A year ago more than half held that view, according to the a similar poll taken last July. The May poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 7 percentage points.

Recruiting efforts are also suffering. Despite granting more waivers for recruits with criminal backgrounds, offering larger cash bonuses, loosening age and weight restrictions, and accepting more high school dropouts, the Army said it had missed its recruiting targets in May and June. Pentagon officials say resistance from families is a major recruiting obstacle. Membership is also increasing among antiwar groups that represent the active military and veterans. Military Families Speak Out, one such group, which was started in the fall of 2002, now has about 3,500 member families. About 500 of them have joined since January.

Senate leaders announced plans Thursday night to revive the White House-backed measure as early as next week, although neither Majority Leader Harry Reid nor his GOP counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, issued any predictions the bill ultimately would pass.

Instead, they issued a statement that said in its entirety: "We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion" of sweeping energy legislation that has occupied the Senate this week.

There was no immediate reaction from the bill's numerous Senate critics, who have consistently attacked the legislation as conferring amnesty on the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the country. At the White House, spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "We are encouraged by the announcement from Senate leaders that comprehensive immigration reform will be brought back up for consideration."

The immigration legislation's revival represented at least an interim victory for President Bush, who returned home from Europe earlier in the week and plunged into a campaign to rescue his top domestic priority. On Tuesday, the president made a rare visit to the Capitol to ask Republican senators to give the bill a second chance. Two days later, responding to a request from pivotal GOP senators, he threw his support behind $4.4 billion in immediate funding for "securing our borders and enforcing our laws at the work site." As drafted, the legislation called for the money to become available over a period of several years.

Under a plan that key lawmakers presented to Reid and McConnell, Republicans and Democrats each will have 10-12 opportunities to amend the measure, with the hope that they will then combine to provide the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by die-hard opponents.

Bush dismissed those concerns. He said he will make his case directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit. "My message will be Vladimir - I call him Vladimir - that you shouldn't fear a missile defense system," Bush said. "As a matter of fact, why don't you cooperate with us on a missile defense system. Why don't you participate with the United States."

The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, said it was significant that Bush promised to make "maximum efforts" to explain his position to Putin. "We have pointed it out to our guest that it is very important that we win maximum support for this project of the Czech Republic who are very sensitive to those issues," Klaus said. "I suppose this is what President Bush clearly realizes." Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek endorsed the plan as well.

China joined Russia on Tuesday in criticizing the U.S. plan, saying the anti-missile system could set off an arms race. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the proposal "is not conducive to mutual trust of major nations and regional security." Most Czechs aren't happy about the proposal for a U.S. anti-missile radar base to be built at the Brdy military zone southwest of their capital. Recent polls here show more than 60 percent of the public in opposition.

Bush appeared with his hosts in a high-ceilinged hall of Prague Castle. Although the event was billed as a press conference, the three leaders took no questions. Despite Bush's declaration that the Cold War is over, the international debate over the missile defense system likely will drown out everything else during his stay in Prague. The White House has billed a speech Bush will deliver on democracy at Czernin Palace as the highlight of his visit here. His Czech counterparts expressed some complaints, such as a two-tiered visa system for European nations that leaves their citizens out in the cold.

*****

Over the weekend, Putin stepped up already incendiary remarks about the U.S. and its intentions with the shield, warning that Moscow could take "retaliatory steps" including aiming nuclear weapons at U.S. military bases in Europe. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, called this sort of talk "not helpful." Still, he, the president and other U.S. officials have sought to cool down the situation - to no avail. They insist the network is meant to protect NATO allies against a missile launch from Iran, not Russia.

In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Bush had not yet made an announcement. Creation of the new job comes as the administration tries to use a combat troop buildup in Iraq to bring a degree of calm so political reconciliation can take hold. The White House has sought a war coordinator to eliminate conflicts among the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies _ and to speak for the president at times. The addition will help Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, who monitors hot spots around the world.

Bush's move is part of a lengthy reshuffling of war leaders. Yet critics have questioned whether a new coordinator will help so late in the Bush presidency or will instead add confusion in the chain of command. Lute's appointment is subject to Senate confirmation. Until now, Hadley and other West Wing officials have tried to keep turf-conscious agencies marching in the same direction on military, political and reconstruction fronts in Iraq. Meanwhile, the public's patience for the war has long eroded, and lawmakers _ including members of Bush's own party _ are pushing a harder line in ensuring that the Iraqi government is making progress toward self-governance.

President George W. Bush's public approval rating fell to the lowest of his presidency and may be dragging down scores for Republican presidential hopefuls, according to a Newsweek poll. Bush's approval rating fell to 28 percent this week, the lowest since a similar score by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the year of the Iran hostage crisis. The poll also found that 71 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S.

Almost two-thirds of those polled, 62 percent, said that Bush's actions in Iraq showed he was "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes," the survey said. The poll also showed that all three leading Democratic contenders beat their Republican counterparts in head-to-head competition among registered voters.

The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show. Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents. Congressional critics and consumer advocates said both episodes show that the agency is incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the food supply.

*****

Last week, the FDA notified California state health officials that hogs on a farm in the state had likely eaten feed laced with melamine, an industrial chemical blamed for the deaths of dozens of pets in recent weeks. Officials are trying to determine whether the chemical's presence in the hogs represents a threat to humans. Pork from animals raised on the farm has been recalled. The FDA has said its inspectors probably would not have found the contaminated food before problems arose. The tainted additive caused a recall of more than 100 different brands of pet food.

The outbreaks point to a need to change the way the agency does business, said Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA's food-safety arm, which is responsible for safeguarding 80 percent of the nation's food supply. "We have 60,000 to 80,000 facilities that we're responsible for in any given year," Brackett said. Explosive growth in the number of processors and the amount of imported foods means that manufacturers "have to build safety into their products rather than us chasing after them," Brackett said. "We have to get out of the 1950s paradigm."

Tomorrow, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on the unprecedented spate of recalls. "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the full House committee. Dingell is considering introducing legislation to boost the agency's accountability, regulatory authority and budget.

The top Senate Democrat leading investigations into the dismissal of 8 U.S. Attorneys by the Justice Department is comparing e-mails lost by the Republican National Committee to President Richard Nixon's famous "18-minute gap" in White House tape recordings.

"Now we are learning that the 'off book' communications they were having about these actions, by using Republican political email addresses, have not been preserved," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor.

He added, "Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes, it appears likely that key documentation has been erased or misplaced. This sounds like the Administration's version of 'the dog ate my homework.'"

The senator was referring to the Nixon White House tapes subpoenaed during the Watergate investigation. On one tape, there was an 18 1/2 minute gap. The former president's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed responsibility for "accidentally" erasing 5 minutes of the recording, but not the remainder of the gap. Further investigations raised questions about the veracity of her testimony.

The Associated Press also noted that when actually delivered, Senator Leahy raised further doubts about the Republican Party's explanation for the lost e-mails. "They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" he proclaimed. "You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers." Leahy threatened further action in response to the news. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."

Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.

Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week. Ford wanted to give the Commander-in-Chief an actual demonstration of the innovative vehicle, so the automaker arranged for an electrical outlet to be installed on the South Lawn and ran a charging cord to the hybrid. However, as Mulally followed Bush out to the car, he noticed someone had left the cord lying at the rear of the vehicle, near the fuel tank.

"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said. "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen This is all off the record, right?"

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered Bush administration environmental officials to reconsider their refusal to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, giving a boost to advocates of stronger action against global warming. The justices, voting 5-4, today said the Environmental Protection Agency didn't follow the requirements of the Clean Air Act in 2003 when it opted not to order cuts in carbon emissions from new cars and trucks.

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The ruling doesn't necessarily mean the EPA will have to impose new regulations. Still, it adds to growing pressure on the administration, which has resisted mandatory limits on carbon emissions. The decision is a setback for General Motors Corp. and other automakers and for utilities with coal-fired plants, including American Electric Power Co. and Southern Co.

Environmentalists and 12 states, including California and Massachusetts, are seeking to force the federal agency to limit emissions from new cars and trucks. New York is leading a separate state effort to curb power-plant emissions. The decision also bolsters efforts by California and other states to enact their own climate-change regulations. In challenging those rules, automakers have pointed to the EPA's conclusion that carbon dioxide isn't an "air pollutant" subject to federal and state regulation under the U.S. Clean Air Act.

The majority today rejected the agency's conclusion. "Greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious definition of 'air pollutant,'" Stevens wrote.

--Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?

--Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?

--Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?

The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention that it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.

Defying a veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Senate narrowly signaled support Tuesday for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by next March. Republican attempts to scuttle the non-binding timeline failed on a vote of 50-48, largely along party lines. The roll call marked the Senate's most forceful challenge to date of the administration's handling of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops.

Three months after Democrats took power in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the moment was at hand to "send a message to President Bush that the time has come to find a new way forward in this intractable war."

*****

Similar legislation drew only 48 votes in the Senate earlier this month, but Democratic leaders made a change that persuaded Nebraska's Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson to swing behind the measure. Additionally, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a vocal critic of the war, sided with the Democrats, assuring them of the majority they needed to turn back a challenge led by Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.

The debate came on legislation that provides $122 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as domestic priorities such relief to hurricane victims and payments to farmers. Separately, supporters of an increase in the minimum wage readied an effort to attach the measure to the spending bill, along with companion tax cuts that Republicans have demanded. The House and Senate have passed different versions of the bill but have yet to reach a compromise.

The House has already passed legislation requiring troops to be withdrawn by Sept. 1, 2008. The Senate vote assured that the Democratic-controlled Congress would send Bush legislation later this spring that calls for a change in war policy. A veto is a certainty, presuming the president follows through.

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

*****

But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent."

Attorneys general in recent decades have ranged from skilled political operatives close to the president (most notably Bobby Kennedy under John F. Kennedy) to nonpolitical lawyers detached from the president (such as Ed Levi under Gerald Ford). Gonzales is surely close to Bush, but nobody would accuse him of being skilled at politics. He puzzled and alarmed conservatives with a January speech in which he claimed that he would take over from the White House the selection of future federal judicial nominees.

*****

The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

[T]he Senate by a 94-2 vote passed a bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists.

"If you politicize the prosecutors, you politicize everybody in the whole chain of law enforcement," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt.

The bill, which has yet to be considered in the House, would set a 120-day deadline for the administration to appoint an interim prosecutor. If the interim appointment is not confirmed by the Senate in that time, a permanent replacement would be named by a federal district judge. Essentially, the Senate returned the law regarding the appointments of U.S. attorneys to where it was before Congress passed the Patriot Act, including the unilateral appointment authority the administration had sought in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

The vote came as Gonzales and the White House braced for more fallout from the firings. The White House also denied reports that it was looking for possible successors for Gonzales. "Those rumors are untrue," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) revealed evidence that Lam had notified Washington about search warrants in a Republican corruption case last year. Soon thereafter, a top Justice Department official in Washington wrote to the White House about a "real problem we have right now with Carol Lam."

"As the evidence comes in, as we look at the e-mails, there were clearly U.S. attorneys that were thorns in the side for one reason or another of the Justice Department," said Feinstein, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "And they decided, by strategy, in one fell swoop to get rid of them." Another Judiciary Committee member, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), agreed that an investigation in San Diego, along with a parallel GOP corruption probe in Los Angeles, might have been directly linked to Lam's firing. "The most notorious is the Southern District of California, San Diego," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "In the middle of the investigation she was fired."

*****

Lam spearheaded the case against Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former Republican congressman from Rancho Santa Fe who pleaded guilty to bribery and income tax evasion. He was sentenced in March 2006 to eight years and four months in prison. In a broadening of the Cunningham investigation, Feinstein said, Lam turned her sights on two of the former lawmaker's associates: Brent R. Wilkes, a Poway-based defense contractor, and Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, a top CIA official who abruptly resigned May 8. The two men, friends from childhood, were roommates at San Diego State University, served as best man at each other's wedding and named their sons after each other.

Feinstein said that on May 10, Lam "sent a notice to the Justice Department saying that there would be two search warrants sent in the case of Dusty Foggo and a defense contractor. The next day, an e-mail went from the Justice Department to the White House." The May 11 e-mail was from D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, to White House Deputy Counsel William Kelley. "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam … leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her four-year term expires," it said.

In testimony given today before the house oversight committee, James Knodell, Director of the Office of Security at the White House, revealed that the the administration had never launched an internal probe to determine the source for the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame in 2003. In addition to revealing a deep reluctance on the part of the administration in determining the party responsible for the leak, Knodell's testimony directly contradicted a prior statement from President Bush promising a full internal probe.

Ms. Plame Wilson, who in testimony earlier today confirmed her status at the time of the scandal as a covert CIA official and struck down assertions that she designed her husband's 2002 mission to Niger, told the committee, "My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department. I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained."

Asked about an obligation of federal officials to report on any knowledge of a leak to a security officer, Knodell confirmed the requirement and admitted that not a single member of the administration had come to speak to him.

Committee chair Henry Waxman, who in his opening statement described the the panel's duty to "determine what went wrong and insist on accountability," was taken aback by the implications of Knodell's testimony, describing it as "a breach within a breach." "Rep. Waxman at one point said that he regretted not being able to put up a video of the president promising a full probe but added, 'I guess we will leave that to The Daily Show,'" Editor and Publisher reports.

VALERIE PLAME WILSON: I found out very early in the morning, when my husband came in and dropped the newspaper on the bed, and I quickly turned and read the article, and I felt like I had been hit in the gut. And I immediately thought of my family's safety, the agents, the networks that I had worked with, and everything goes through your mind in an instant.

My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department. It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover. Furthermore, testimony in the criminal trial of Vice President Cheney's former Chief-of-Staff, who has now been convicted of serious crimes, indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives.

*****

I travelled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence. I loved my career because I love my country. But all my training, all of the value of my years of service were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed. [Foreign enemies tried to expose CIA spies, but it was a] terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my career.

New unreleased e-mails from top administration officials show that the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than the White House previously acknowledged. The e-mails also show how Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing the attorneys en masse while he was still White House counsel -- weeks before he was confirmed as attorney general. The e-mails put Rove at the epicenter of the imbroglio and raise questions about Gonzales' explanations of the matter.

The White House said Thursday night that the e-mails did not contradict the previous statements about former White House counsel Harriet Miers' role. The e-mail exchange, dated January 6, 2005, is between then-deputy White House counsel David Leitch and Kyle Sampson at the Justice Department. According to a senior White House official who has seen the e-mail exchange, "It's not inconsistent with what we have said." Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said Gonazales "has no recollection of any plan or discussion to replace U.S. attorneys while he was still White House counsel." She said he was preparing for his attorney general confirmation hearing and was focused on that.

"Of course, discussions of changes in presidential appointees would have been appropriate and normal White House exchanges in the days and months after the election as the White House was considering different personnel changes administration-wide," Scolinos said. The e-mail exchange is dated more than a month before the White House acknowledged it was considering firing all the U.S. attorneys. On its face, the plan is not improper, inappropriate or even unusual: The president has the right to fire U.S. attorneys at any time, and presidents have done so when they took office.

What has made the issue a political firestorm is the White House's insistence that the idea came from Miers and was swiftly rejected. White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Tuesday that Miers had suggested firing all 93 attorneys, and that it was "her idea only." Snow said Miers' idea was quickly rejected by the Department of Justice. The latest e-mails show that Gonzales and Rove were both involved in the discussion, and neither rejected it out of hand.

Does President Bush have it in for the press corps? Touring a Caterpillar factory in Peoria, Ill., the Commander in Chief got behind the wheel of a giant tractor and played chicken with a few wayward reporters. Wearing a pair of stylish safety glasses--at least more stylish than most safety glasses--Bush got a mini-tour of the factory before delivering remarks on the economy. "I would suggest moving back," Bush said as he climbed into the cab of a massive D-10 tractor. "I'm about to crank this sucker up." As the engine roared to life, White House staffers tried to steer the press corps to safety, but when the tractor lurched forward, they too were forced to scramble for safety."Get out of the way!" a news photographer yelled. "I think he might run us over!" said another. White House aides tried to herd the reporters the right way without getting run over themselves. Even the Secret Service got involved, as one agent began yelling at reporters to get clear of the tractor.

Watching the chaos below, Bush looked out the tractor's window and laughed, steering the massive machine into the spot where most of the press corps had been positioned. The episode lasted about a minute, and Bush was still laughing when he pulled to a stop. He gave reporters a thumbs-up. "If you've never driven a D-10, it's the coolest experience," Bush said afterward. Yeah, almost as much fun as seeing your life flash before your eyes.

With Bush widely viewed as an ineffectual "lame duck" (by 71 percent of all Americans), over half (53 percent) of the poll's respondents now say they believe history will see him as a below-average president, up three points from last May. The first time this question was asked, in October 2003, as many people thought Bush would go down in history as an above average president as thought we would be regarded as below average (29 to 26 percent). Only 22 percent of those polled think Bush's decisions about Iraq and other major policy are influenced mainly by the facts; 67 percent say the president's decisions are influenced more by his personal beliefs.

This perhaps explains why only about half (49 percent) of adult Americans even bothered to watch or listen to any of the State of the Union speech as it happened. Of those, less than half (42 percent) think his energy, health care and other domestic policy proposals are likely to be seriously considered by the new Democratic-controlled Congress. Overall, 61 percent are unsatisfied with the way things are going in America; just 30 percent are satisfied.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. President, do you have a feeling of personal failure about Iraq right now?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I'm frustrated at times about Iraq because I understand the consequences of failure. I want the Iraqis to succeed for our own sake. This is a war; part of a broader war, and that if we fail in Iraq, there is a better likelihood that the enemy comes and hurts us here. And so, I am frustrated with the progress. If you were to take it and put me in an opinion poll and said do I approve of Iraq, I'd be one of those that said, no, I don't approve of what's taking place in Iraq.

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MR. LEHRER: Is there a little bit of a broken egg problem here, Mr. President, that there is instability and there is violence in Iraq - sectarian violence, Iraqis killing other Iraqis, and now the United States helped create the broken egg and now says, okay, Iraqis, it's your problem. You put the egg back together, and if you don't do it quickly and you don't do it well, then we'll get the hell out.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah, you know, that's an interesting question. I don't quite view it as the broken egg; I view it as the cracked egg --

MR. LEHRER: Cracked egg?

PRESIDENT BUSH: -- that - where we still have a chance to move beyond the broken egg. And I thought long and hard about the decision, Jim. Obviously it's a big decision for this theater in the war on terror, and you know, if I didn't believe we could keep the egg from fully cracking, I wouldn't ask 21,000 kids - additional kids to go into Iraq to reinforce those troops that are there.

What's different is an Iraqi attitude, and it is - look, failure last time with not enough troops in Baghdad, and the rules of engagement were such that our troops couldn't move when given an order. Their order was countermanded by Iraqi politicians - in other words, you need to go get this guy in a particular neighborhood, and they would be moving in toward him, and then the Iraqis would pull - say, well, we'd better not make that move right now, we'd better - it may be too much politics. And Prime Minister Maliki has assured his commander and our commander that the rules of engagement will be different this time. And so things have changed. In other words, I'm not putting troops into a situation where there hadn't been enough changes to assure me that we can make progress.

MR. LEHRER: General Casey said yesterday that the commander said that it may be spring or even summer before we have any signs of success from the new program -

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes.

After meeting with top U.S. generals at Camp Victory, Gates acknowledged concerns that rushing thousands more American troops to the battlefront could allow the Iraqis to slow their effort take control of the country. He said no decisions have been made. "It's clearly a consideration," Gates said of how an infusion of American troops might affect Iraqi leaders. "I think that the commanders out here have expressed a concern about that."

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and one of several generals who met with Gates, said he supports boosting troop levels only when there is a specific purpose for their deployment. Other military leaders have expressed uncertainty over the purpose and results of injecting more troops. "I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea, but what I want to see happen is when, if we do bring more American troops here, they help us progress to our strategic objectives," Casey told reporters during a news conference with Gates and other military leaders.

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Gates was noncommittal when asked whether the sectarian violence in Baghdad can be quashed without taking action against the Mahdi Army of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sadr is a main supporter of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

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[Gates] expressed concern that the Army and Marine Corps are not large enough to face challenges of the 21st century that might include threats in Iran and North Korea, as well as natural disasters. The debate over increasing troops has continued for months, as the military has been struggling to quell the escalating violence — particularly sectarian bloodshed — in Iraq. The war has claimed more than 2,950 U.S. casualties and cost roughly $350 billion.

Some top U.S. commanders have been wary of even a short-term troop increase, saying it might bring only a temporary respite to the violence while confronting the U.S. with shortages of fresh troops in the future.

The American people, as politicians like to say, spoke last week -- and spoke in no uncertain terms. The 2006 vote does not suggest an eagerness for a sharp left turn. It seems, rather, to be a plea for a shift from the hard right of the neoconservatives to the center represented by the old man in Houston. The re-emergence of Iraq Study Group voices such as Baker, Gates and Alan Simpson -- all longtime friends of Bush Senior -- is not unlike the entrance of Fortinbras at the conclusion of "Hamlet." These are 41's men, and the removal of Rumsfeld—an ancient rival of Bush Senior's from the Ford days -- is a move toward the broad middle. The apparent triumph of pragmatism over ideology on Iraq was welcome news, at least to the public. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 67 percent favor Bush Senior's internationalist approach to foreign policy over his son's more unilateral course.

Did 41 help bring Gates to the Pentagon? The White House denies it, but, as a Bush friend told NEWSWEEK, "his fingerprints are all over this." (The friend refused to be identified for fear of alienating the family.) Given the mists of secrecy that envelop the 41-43 relationship, it is striking that the broad Bush circle believes he had a hand in the Rumsfeld succession: as an old CIA director, 41 rarely leaves any clues at all.

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As the war has gone badly and the years have ticked by—2003, 2004, 2005 and now much of 2006—the senior President Bush, the man who managed to capture just 37 percent of the vote in 1992, has grown in stature. Raising taxes and capping domestic spending in 1990, refusing to exceed the United Nations mandate after expelling Saddam from Kuwait, and deftly managing the end of the cold war and the reunification of Germany loom ever larger. Given the midterm reaction to the son's inattention to alliances and to the details of postwar Iraq, it is clear that many Americans are nostalgic for the skills and sensibility the first President Bush brought to the Oval Office-a reversal of historical fortune that has come, sadly for the father, at the expense of his son.

In terms of foreign policy, it is true that 41 was more a realist than an ideologue-the prose to Reagan's cold-war poetry. And it is also true that the son would prefer to be remembered not as a second George Bush but as a second Gipper-a big, transformative president who confronted a mortal threat to the nation with steely soul and soaring words. Hence, it seems, the innate appeal of the neoconservative argument, advanced in part by Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney (a 41 figure who got neocon religion after 9/11), to strike Iraq in a noble bid to transform the Middle East.

It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen—in America and the world at large-as a decisive "No" vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush's failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration's endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why-thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer.

As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for themselves. Bush's decision to seize Iraq will almost surely leave behind a broken state divided into warring ethnic enclaves, with hundreds of thousands killed and maimed and thousands more thirsting for revenge against the country that crossed the ocean to attack them. The invasion failed at every level: if securing Israel was part of the administration's calculation-as the record suggests it was for several of his top aides-the result is also clear: the strengthening of Iran's hand in the Persian Gulf, with a reach up to Israel's northern border, and the elimination of the most powerful Arab state that might stem Iranian regional hegemony.

The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can't face the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against Iran and Syria.

Meanwhile, America's image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country-which once symbolized hope and justice-to be humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do.

"So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion ... it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth." That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War. But until recently, the "hard bruising" truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington.

One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "mission accomplished," the insurgency is "in its last throes," and "back off," we know what we’re doing, are a few choice examples. Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors. Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war's planning, execution and dimming prospects for success. Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee in September: "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it ... and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war."

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But despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition. For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don’t show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves. Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money. And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand. Now, the president says he'll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House. This is a mistake. It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation’s current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.

*****

Donald Rumsfeld must go.

As he looks into my eyes, speaking slowly and with obvious deliberation, Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat-an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"-is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating."

According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible... I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."

Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' ... I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."

Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Fearing that worse is still to come, Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself-what he defines as "the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world"-is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, "it's not going to sell." And if he, too, had his time over, Adelman says, "I would write an article that would be skeptical over whether there would be a performance that would be good enough to implement our policy. The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless. I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked can't do. And that's very different from let's go."

"I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."

Former U.S. secretary of state James Baker was visibly shocked when he last visited Iraq, and said the country was in a "helluva mess", the BBC reported today. Mr Baker is leading a review of the situation in Iraq by a bipartisan US committee of experts, and is expected to recommend a change in US strategy for rebuilding Iraq.

Citing a unnamed close friend and ally of Mr Baker's, himself a top politician, the BBC reported that Mr Baker said "there simply weren't any easy solutions". Mr Baker was secretary of state to US President George W. Bush's father, president George Bush. Citing unnamed members of Mr Baker's committee, The Los Angeles Times yesterday said that two options under consideration would represent reversals of US policy - withdrawing American troops in phases, and bringing neighbouring Iran and Syria into a joint effort to stop the fighting.

The BBC also reported that a third possibility was under consideration - to concentrate on getting stability in Iraq, and stop aiming to establish a democracy there. The 10-member commission has agreed that change must be made, the Times report said. "It's not going to be 'stay the course,'" the paper quoted one participant as saying. "The bottom line is, (current policy) isn't working. There's got to be another way."

It seems increasingly clear that the GOP congressional leadership, eager for every safe incumbent in the House to run for re-election, looked the other way as evidence accumulated that Mark Foley had a thing for pages. Holding onto his seat became more important than confronting him over his extracurricular activities.

But there's more to the story of why Foley stood for re-election this year. Yesterday, a source close to Foley explained to THE NEW REPUBLIC that in early 2006 the congressman had all but decided to retire from the House and set up shop on K Street. "Mark's a friend of mine," says this source. "He told me, 'I'm thinking about getting out of it and becoming a lobbyist.'"

But when Foley's friend saw the Congressman again this spring, something had changed. To the source's surprise, Foley told him he would indeed be standing for re-election. What happened? Karl Rove intervened. According to the source, Foley said he was being pressured by "the White House and Rove gang," who insisted that Foley run. If he didn't, Foley was told, it might impact his lobbying career.

"He said, 'The White House made it very clear I have to run,'" explains Foley's friend, adding that Foley told him that the White House promised that if Foley served for two more years it would "enhance his success" as a lobbyist. "I said, 'I thought you wanted out of this?' And he said, 'I do, but they're scared of losing the House and the thought of two years of Congressional hearings, so I have two more years of duty.'"

Garner came back to the U.S. in June and basically hid out for a couple of weeks, not wanting to see anyone at the Pentagon or talk about his experience in Iraq. Finally, on June 18, 2003, alone with Rumsfeld around the small table in the secretary’s office, Garner felt he had an obligation to state the depths of his concerns.

"We've made three tragic decisions," Garner said. "Really?" Rumsfeld said. "Three terrible mistakes," Garner said. He cited the extent of the de-Baathification, getting rid of the army, and summarily dumping the Iraqi leadership group. Disbanding the military had been the biggest mistake. Now there were hundreds of thousands of disorganized, unemployed, armed Iraqis running around. Garner made his final point: "There's still time to rectify this. There's still time to turn it around."

Rumsfeld looked at Garner for a moment with his take-no-prisoners gaze. "Well," he said, "I don't think there is anything we can do, because we are where we are." Rumsfeld and Garner went to the White House to see Bush. It was Garner's second time with the president. "Mr. President, let me tell you a couple of stories," Garner said. Describing meetings with Iraqis, Garner painted a positive picture. "I'd get ready to leave," Garner said, "and this is true—as I leave they're all thumbs-up and they'd say, 'God bless Mr. George Bush and Mr. Tony Blair. Thank you for taking away Saddam Hussein.' That was in 70 meetings. That always was the final response."

"Oh, that's good," Bush said. On the way out, Bush slapped Garner on the back. "Hey Jay, you want to do Iran?" "Sir, the boys and I talked about that and we want to hold out for Cuba. We think the rum and the cigars are a little better … The women are prettier." Bush laughed. "You got it. You got Cuba." Of course with all the stories, jocularity, buddy-buddy talk, bluster and confidence in the Oval Office, Garner had left out the headline. He had not mentioned the problems he saw, or even hinted at them. He did not tell Bush about the three tragic mistakes. Once again the aura of the presidency had shut out the most important news -- the bad news.

It was only one example of a visitor to the Oval Office not telling the president the whole story or the truth. Likewise, in these moments where Bush had someone from the field there in the chair beside him, he did not press, did not try to open the door himself and ask what the visitor had seen and thought. The whole atmosphere too often resembled a royal court, with Cheney and Rice in attendance, some upbeat stories, exaggerated good news, and a good time had by all.

Members of the Sept. 11 commission said today that they were alarmed that they were told nothing about a White House meeting in July 2001 at which George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, is reported to have warned Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, about an imminent Al Qaeda attack and failed to persuade her to take action. Details of the previously undisclosed meeting on July 10, 2001, two months before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, were first reported last week in a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.

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Nor has there been any comment from J. Cofer Black, Mr. Tenet's counterterrorism chief, who is reported in the book to have attended the July 10 meeting and left it frustrated by Ms. Rice's "brush-off" of the warnings. He is quoted as saying, "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head." Mr. Black did not return calls left at the security firm Blackwater, which he joined last year.

The book says that Mr. Tenet hurriedly organized the meeting — calling ahead from his car as it traveled to the White House — because he wanted to "shake Rice" into persuading the president to respond to dire intelligence warnings that summer about a terrorist strike. Mr. Woodward writes that Mr. Tenet left the meeting frustrated because "they were not getting through to Rice."

The disclosures took members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission by surprise last week. Some questioned whether information about the July 10 meeting was intentionally withheld from the panel. In interviews Saturday and today, commission members said they were never told about the meeting despite hours of public and private questioning with Ms. Rice, Mr. Tenet and Mr. Black, much of it focused specifically on how the White House had dealt with terrorist threats in the summer of 2001.

"None of this was shared with us in hours of private interviews, including interviews under oath, nor do we have any paper on this," said Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic member of the commission and a former House member from Indiana. "I'm deeply disturbed by this. I'm furious." Another Democratic commissioner, former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, said that the staff of the Sept. 11 commission was polled in recent days on the disclosures in Mr. Woodward’s book and agreed that the meeting "was never mentioned to us."

"This is certainly something we would have wanted to know about," he said, referring to the July 10, 2001, meeting. He said he had attended the commission's private interviews with both Mr. Tenet and Ms. Rice and had pressed "very hard for them to provide us with everything they had regarding conversations with the executive branch" about terrorist threats before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.

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The NIE, whose contents were first reported by the New York Times, coincides with public statements by senior intelligence officials describing a different kind of conflict than the one outlined by President Bush in a series of recent speeches marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "Together with our coalition partners," Bush said in an address earlier this month to the Military Officers Association of America, "we've removed terrorist sanctuaries, disrupted their finances, killed and captured key operatives, broken up terrorist cells in America and other nations, and stopped new attacks before they're carried out. We're on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront, and we'll accept nothing less than complete victory."

But the battlefronts intelligence analysts depict are far more impenetrable and difficult, if not impossible, to combat with the standard tools of warfare. Although intelligence officials agree that the United States has seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qaeda and disrupted its ability to plan and direct major operations, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized.

Many of the new cells, the NIE concludes, have no connection to any central structure and arose independently. The members of the cells communicate only among themselves and derive their inspiration, ideology and tactics from the more than 5,000 radical Islamic Web sites. They spread the message that the Iraq war is a Western attempt to conquer Islam by first occupying Iraq and establishing a permanent presence in the Middle East. The April NIE, titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," does not offer policy prescriptions. "What these guys at NIC are supposed to do is to lay it out in very clear, understandable terms," said the intelligence official. "It's not the role of the NIC to offer recommendations." Rather, it "basically states the conditions" as the intelligence community sees them, he said.

"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. "And it smells of sulfur still today." Chavez accused Bush of having spoken "as if he owned the world" and said a psychiatrist could be called to analyze the statement.

"As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: 'The Devil's Recipe.' " Chavez held up a book by Noam Chomsky on imperialism and said it encapsulated his arguments: "The American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its hegemonistic system of domination, and we cannot allow him to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated."

Chavez also blasted the United Nations, calling the General Assembly "merely a deliberative organ" that meets once a year. "We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world," he said. Chavez called the veto power shared by the five permanent members of the Security Council "anti-democratic," and cited the U.S. veto of a resolution that would have demanded the Israelis halt their bombing of Lebanon this summer.

That move "allowed the Israelis with impunity to destroy Lebanon in front of us all as we stood there watching," Chavez said. He recommended that the world body's headquarters be moved to another country and offered Venezuela as a possible new home. He noted that he recently returned from a summit of more than 50 heads of state from nonaligned nations in Havana, Cuba, and urged his audience to support their efforts for "a world of peace."

At a news conference after the speech, he further lambasted the United States and U.N., saying of the latter, "There is no way to save it." The U.N. was founded in an era of two superpowers, he said. "The Soviet Union collapsed. The United States empire is on the way down and it will be finished in the near future, for the good of all mankind." He also said the U.S. government was the "first enemy" of its people. "Their freedoms are restricted through the Patriot Act. They are sent to die in Iraq for no reason. The people of the United States are being deceived," he said.

The report, released Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provides details to support the committee's earlier, July 2004 conclusion that much of the intelligence that led up to the Iraq war was flawed, and the report did not turn up any new evidence to support the administration's claim that Iraq was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the committee's chairman, sought to minimize the political fallout of his committee's findings by noting that doubts about intelligence on Iraq are nothing new. "The long-known fact is that the prewar intelligence was wrong," Roberts said. "That flawed intelligence was used by policymakers, both in the administration and in Congress, as one of numerous justifications to go to war in Iraq."

But committee Democrats, presaging a certain campaign theme this fall, said the new report substantiates suspicions that the White House trumped up the case against Iraq. "The Bush administration's case for war in Iraq was fundamentally misleading," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat. "The administration pursued a deceptive strategy of using intelligence reporting that the intelligence community had already warned was uncorroborated, unreliable and, in critical instances, fabricated."

Since the invasion of Iraq, the conflict has devolved into an extended battle among anti-American Iraqi insurgents and U.S. and British forces, and, increasingly, fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslim militias and death squads, according to a recent Pentagon assessment. As of midmorning Friday, 2,662 Americans have died in Iraq operations, and more than 19,945 have been wounded, according to the Pentagon. No weapons of mass destruction have been found by U.S. forces in Iraq, with the exception of some older chemical weapons shells. After the U.S. invasion, the CIA and Pentagon dispatched a substantial team of experts to search for such weapons.

QUESTION: A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

BUSH: I square it because imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein, who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who had relations with Zarqawi. You know, I've heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived [in Iraq] and — you know, the stir-up-the-hornet's-nest theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were …

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with that?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attacks upon the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. . . . .Except for it's part of — and nobody's ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September the 11th is: Take threats before they fully materialize…

President Bush’s job approval rating dipped two points in the last three weeks, despite the foiling of an airline terror plot and the adoption of a cease–fire deal between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

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The numbers continue to reflect erosion in the President’s political base – just 62% of Republicans give him positive marks for his job performance, while 38% give him negative marks. Even among weekly WalMart shoppers – a demographic group identified by Pollster John Zogby as a critical support group for Bush – just 45% now give him positive job marks, though his numbers among those shoppers have improved 10 points since early June.

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One third of respondents – 34% – said that, overall, the nation is headed in the right direction, while 59% said they think things are off on the wrong track.

The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, passed by the US Senate on Tuesday, would lift rules Bush set in 2001 that make federal funds available only for research on a small number of embryonic stem cell lines which existed at that time. Supporters have said the research offers major hope to cure many life-threatening illnesses including Parkinsons disease and Alzheimers' disease.

But the president had repeatedly threatened to veto the bill on moral grounds. "We must also remember that embryonic stem cells come from human embryos that are destroyed for their cells. Each of these human embryos is a unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value," Bush said in his comments to specially invited families at the White House.

"Some people argue that finding new cures for disease requires the destruction of human embryos," Bush said, before adding: "I disagree. "I believe that with the right techniques and the right policies we can achieve scientific progress while living up to our ethical responsibilities."

Last week, the journal Science published a letter from three researchers criticizing the claim that adult stem cells are preferable to embryonic stem cells. The authors included Dr. Steven Teitelbaum of Washington University in St. Louis, who has used adult stem cells to treat bone diseases in children. The authors wrote that the exaggerated claims for adult stem cells "mislead laypeople and cruelly deceive patients."

The bill heading for Bush's desk would expand federal funding of work on stem cells taken from embryos. Such cells come from extra embryos originally created for in-vitro fertilization. Many experts believe embryonic stem cells could one day help regenerate damaged tissue for patients with conditions such as diabetes, spinal cord injury or Parkinson's disease, though embryonic cells have not yet been tested in humans.

Adult stem cells, which usually come from bone marrow transplants or umbilical cord blood, are widely considered less flexible than embryonic stem cells in forming many types of tissue. Yet adult stem cells already are in common use for certain conditions, such as replenishing immune cells after cancer treatment and treating some bone and blood disorders. Bush allowed limited funding of embryonic stem cell work in August 2001, but he banned funding of cells taken from embryos after that date. However, private foundations and companies have continued to fund new embryonic research. Many scientists and lawmakers argue that the federal funding limitation has hindered progress.

White House spokesman Ken Lisaius on Tuesday could not provide the name of a stem cell researcher who shares Rove's views on the superior promise of adult stem cells.

The changes, the biggest since the current payment system was adopted in 1983, are meant to improve the accuracy of payment rates. But doctors, hospitals and patient groups say the effects could be devastating. Federal officials said that biases and distortions in the current system had created financial incentives for hospitals to treat certain patients, on whom they could make money, and to avoid others, who were less profitable.

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Medicare pays more than $125 billion a year to nearly 5,000 hospitals. The new plan is not expected to save money, but will shift around billions of dollars, creating clear winners and losers. The effects will ripple through the health care system because many private insurers and state Medicaid programs follow Medicare’s example. Dr. Alan D. Guerci, president of St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, N.Y., said the new formula would cut Medicare payments to his hospital by $21 million, or 12 percent. "It will significantly reduce payments for cardiac care and will force many hospitals to reduce the number of cardiac procedures they perform," Dr. Guerci said.

A coalition of patient organizations, including the Parkinson’s Action Network and the Society for Women’s Health Research, told the government in a letter that the new system "could have a devastating impact on payment for critical treatments for seriously ill patients, with reimbursement for some essential procedures cut as much as 30 percent." The basic payment for surgery to open clogged arteries, by inserting a drug-coated wire mesh stent, would be cut by 33 percent, to $7,590. The payment for implanting a defibrillator, like the one used by Vice President Dick Cheney, would be cut 23 percent, to $22,000, while the payment for hip and knee replacements would be reduced 10 percent, to $14,500.

"This is a bit of a catastrophe," said Dr. Herbert Pardes, president of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. In its zeal to cut the profits of doctor-owned specialty hospitals, including cardiac hospitals, Dr. Pardes said, the government has inadvertently hit many nonprofit academic medical centers.

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Without a delay, Mr. Slotnik said, hospitals can expect to see a 35 percent reduction in Medicare payments for stroke patients treated with clot-busting drugs. The basic payment for such cases is now $11,578. It is no surprise that the Greater New York Hospital Association, which represents many teaching hospitals in a high-cost area, objects to the new system. But hospitals in North Dakota are also concerned. Arnold R. Thomas, president of the North Dakota Healthcare Association, said the new system would cause "radical shifts" of money among the state’s 52 hospitals. "The effects would be rather random and inequitable," Mr. Arnold said. When hospitals lose Medicare revenue, they often seek higher reimbursement from private insurers. J. Brian Munroe, vice president of WellPoint, one of the largest private plans, said he feared that the Medicare changes "will introduce a significant amount of disruption to the commercial health insurance marketplace, driving up health care costs and causing marketplace confusion."

The fighting, which killed 57 people, was a dramatic escalation in the battle between Israel and Hezbollah, an Islamic militant group which has a free hand in southern Lebanon and holds seats in parliament. The Lebanese government, caught in the middle, pleaded for a cease-fire. But Israel said it was determined to beat Hezbollah back and deny the militant fighters positions they traditionally held along the northern border.

"If the government of Lebanon fails to deploy its forces, as is expected of a sovereign government, we shall not allow Hezbollah forces to remain any further on the borders of the state of Israel," Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said. Israel's offensive was its heaviest in Lebanon in 24 years, launched after Hezbollah guerrillas snatched two Israeli soldiers in a brazen cross-border raid Wednesday. Two days of Israeli bombings killed 45 Lebanese and two Kuwaitis and wounded 103. Two Israeli civilians and eight Israeli soldiers have also been killed, the military's highest death toll in four years.

With the airport closed, many tourists were trapped while others drove over the mountains to Syria -- though Israeli warplanes struck the highway linking Beirut to the Syrian capital of Damascus early Friday, closing the country's main artery and further isolating Lebanon from the outside world. Beirut residents stayed indoors, leaving the streets of the capital largely empty. Others packed supermarkets to stock up on goods. Long lines formed on gas stations, with many quickly running out of gas.

Israel said its attacks were intended to prevent the movement of the captured soldiers and hamper Hezbollah's military capacity. It said it had information Hezbollah was trying to take the two soldiers to its ally, Iran. Fears mounted among Arab and European governments that violence in Lebanon could spiral out of control in a volatile region already torn by conflicts in Iraq and in Gaza. Israel has launched an offensive in Gaza against Hamas, whose fighters are holding another Israeli soldier captured two weeks ago.