George Bush is facing increasing scepticism over the US role in Iraq, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor
'Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching."
The dead people US President George Bush was referring to in his prime-time televised press conference on Tuesday were American soldiers. Photographers are banned from taking pictures of coffins arriving back at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington. But since the upsurge of violence in Iraq there have been a number of televised scenes of the kind Bush finds undesirable and gut-wrenching.
On Wednesday, for example, there was extensive TV coverage of the memorial service in Brookfield, Wisconsin of the 20-year-old National Guard Specialist, Michelle Witmer, five days after she was killed in Iraq. It was a moving event, with relatives and high- school friends lining up to sympathise with her two soldier-sisters, Rachel Witmer (24) and Michelle's twin Charity Witmer (20), also serving in Iraq and home on emergency leave.
Witmer's high school friend, Jared Lane (19), told Associated France Presse (AFP): "I am absolutely revolted. I'm ready for the war to be over. It just seems like a hopeless case."
This is the sort of sentiment that is deeply worrying for the Bush administration as the country experiences outpourings of grief at memorial services not seen since the attacks on September 11th, 2001.
On Thursday, in an editorial decision recalling the grim days after 9/11, the New York Times devoted a page to the photographs of the 64 military casualties who died in the period April 4th to April 10th. The patriotic fervour of the post-9/11 period has ebbed, and scepticism about the American effort in Iraq is growing, even among Republicans. Iraq is a mess and people are unnerved by it, according to Minnesota Governor, Tim Pawlenty, Republican co-chairman of Bush's state re-election campaign, who attended the funerals of two US soldiers this week.
"People do want to know, 'What's the end game here?'" he told Associated Press (AP). At one funeral he went to, that of Marine Tyler Fey of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, the soldier's brother Ryan Fey told thousands of mourners he had "so much anger for the politicians in Washington, whose policies sent my brother on a second tour of Iraq after I thought he'd done his part in the initial invasion".
Other mourners interviewed said it would be a tragedy to give up now, a betrayal of those who died. But fighting on because others have given their lives was one of the factors that helped prolong the Vietnam war and the comparisons are becoming more frequent.
The sudden descent into chaos in Iraq has been almost as shocking to Americans as the 1968 Tet offensive when Washington felt the Viet Cong had been defeated. The White House then correctly proclaimed Tet to be a military failure for the communists, and the Pentagon may this time overcome the insurgency in Iraq. But after Tet, the majority of American voters said, for the first time, that the Vietnam war was a mistake. Similarly, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's announcement on Thursday that the troops in Iraq would be increased by 20,000 carried echoes of the escalation of US forces in Vietnam during the 1960s by the then defence secretary, Robert McNamara.
The president's press conference this week came against a background of falling support for the war and a perception among his officials that the White House is losing its grip on the message. An AP poll found that about half of Americans believe the military action in Iraq has increased rather than decreased the threat of terrorism, a fear stoked by Osama bin Laden in his latest tape vowing new attacks against the US.
Making this one of the worst weeks of his presidency, the interim reports of the independent commission investigating 9/11 revealed incompetence and arrogance in the administration in the months before the attacks. The revelation that the president received a 20-sentence briefing headed "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" on August 6th, 2001 has been deeply embarrassing.
Joe Conason of the New York Observer worked out that in 2001, prior to 9/11, Bush spent 54 days at his ranch in Texas, 38 days at Camp David and a four-day weekend at the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
It turns out that Bush's Attorney General, John Ashcroft, to whom the FBI is answerable, was so uninterested in terrorism that he failed to list it as a priority, and actually cut the counter-terrorism budget to fund his other priorities such as a war on medical marijuana users at a time when CIA director George Tenet's hair was said to be "on fire" with warnings.
The majority of Americans still see Bush as a strong leader and as a likeable person, according to a recent National Annenberg Election Survey, but most also now find him reckless and arrogant.
The White House press corps, less cowed than a year ago, didn't get far when trying to make Bush acknowledge any mistakes (though he made another during Tuesday's press conference, telling viewers 50 tonnes of mustard gas were found in Libya - this was twice the actual amount).
Critics recalled that President Kennedy took responsibility for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and Ronald Reagan said the blame for sending Marines to their death in Beirut properly rested "in the office of this president".
The country is now so polarised over Iraq that Bush's performance on Tuesday got starkly divergent reviews. The New York Times found his responses "distressingly rambling and unfocused". The New York Daily News saw an "unwavering, resolute, steadfast and far-seeing" war-time president.
Many of the relatives of those serving in Iraq see only a deepening and confusing crisis which means that their loved ones are not coming home yet, and that when they do it might be in a box, delivered to Andrews Air Force base, where cameras are forbidden.