IRAQ: The withdrawal of US marines from Falluja, along with mounting US casualties, has created a sense of foreboding in the US that the Pentagon has lost the military initiative in Iraq.
A year ago today, President Bush proclaimed "Mission Accomplished", but the toll for April alone of 134 soldiers killed has exceeded the number who died in the six-week battle for Baghdad.
Mr Bush said yesterday he was referring to the removal of Saddam when he made his boast on an aircraft carrier, and claimed the US "is making progress, you bet" in Iraq.
Whether in Falluja or elsewhere, he said, the US would deal with those trying to prevent a free society emerging.
Democratic challenger Mr John Kerry called on the administration to engage with other nations, and "put pride aside" to complete the mission in Iraq.
"We've seen the news. We've seen the pictures, and we know we are living through days of great danger," the Massachusetts senator said in a major speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.
Mr Bush also acknowledged a setback in the battle for Arab opinion with the showing of ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners by US guards in photographs on CBS television.
He shared a "deep disgust with the way they were treated", he told reporters at the White House, and "I didn't like it one bit".
US coalition allies also expressed their horror, and UK Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair's spokesman said in London the British government was "appalled" at the photographs, taken at Baghdad's Abu Gharib prison.
The "repositioning" of marines away from Falluja yesterday has meanwhile provoked a storm of criticism in the US, much of it from former military officers.
Former air force officer Mr John Mearsheimer told the McLeher News Hour the insurgents would be emboldened as it would look like "a victory for the bad guys".
Retired colonel Mr Patrick Lang said it was the best of a number of bad options, but would be seen across the Arab world as a defeat for the US.
Republican commentator Mr Pat Buchanan said on MSNBC that a "base camp of the enemy has been allowed to stand in the heart of Iraq".
To mark the anniversary of the "mission accomplished" claim, the Washington Post filled three pages yesterday with photographs of Iraqi war dead, and other papers followed suit.
On ABC's Nightline last night presenter Ted Koppel read the names of more than 700 US soldiers killed in Iraq, an act that prompted Sinclair Broadcast Group, a major Bush contributor, to order its seven ABC affiliates to drop the programme on the grounds that it was a "political statement".
This provoked an angry outburst from Republican senator Mr John McCain, a Vietnam veteran, who called it "deeply offensive" to the families of those who died.
Taking their lead from 52 British counterparts who protested in a letter to Mr Blair for supporting Mr Bush's Middle East policies, more than 20 former US diplomats have signed a letter for Mr Bush accusing him of losing prestige, credibility and friends by reversing US policy with his endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon.
In further embarrassment for the White House yesterday, it was reported that Mr Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, had accused the Bush administration six months before 9/11 of "paying no attention" to terrorism.
They would "stagger along" until a major incident, and then suddenly say, 'Oh my God, shouldn't we be organised to deal with this," he said in a speech in February 2001.