US: With just seven weeks to go in the US presidential election, President Bush is facing a deepening crisis in Iraq which could yet have an impact on the outcome of voting on November 2nd writes Conor O'Clery in New York.
The insurgency is growing, the prospect of planned elections by January is fading and there is criticism from the military on the ground of Pentagon strategy in dealing with insurgent-held cities.
With the situation worsening, the Bush administration yesterday asked the US Congress to transfer $3.5 billion of $18.4 billion for Iraqi reconstruction to pay for increased security.
As scepticism grows that the US can fulfil its aims of bringing democracy to Iraq, both presidential candidates are struggling to offer Americans a way out.
Mr Bush insisted yesterday that US troops would return home after they had trained new armies in Afghanistan and Iraq to help them move towards elections and democracy.
"Despite ongoing acts of violence, Iraq now has a strong Prime Minister, a national council, and national elections are scheduled in January," he told a National Guard convention in Las Vegas.
Mr John Kerry, who supported the war, has stepped up his attacks on Mr Bush for mishandling the conflict and promised to withdraw troops in his first four-year term, but the Democratic challenger has not seriously dented the President's image as a decisive commander-in-chief.
Potentially more serious for Mr Bush is open crticism from top military ranks about strategy in Iraq, highlighted this week by the comments of the outgoing Marine general in charge of western Iraq.
Lieut Gen James Conway told US reporters after stepping down at the weekend that he opposed the timing of the Marine assault on Fallujah ordered after the killing of four US contractors, as it looked like an act of revenge, and with the subsequent decision to halt the offensive and hand over control to a "Fallujah Brigade" of former Saddam soldiers.
This brigade has ceased to exist, and its US-supplied weapons, vehicles and radios have fallen into the hands of the insurgents, US officers told the Washington Post, which also quoted US officials in Iraq as saying the military decisions were made in the White House.
"When we were told to attack Fallujah, I think we certainly increased the level of animosity that existed," Gen Conway said, but "once you commit, you got to stay committed."
The admission last week by Pentagon chiefs that Fallujah and several cities were under insurgent control has opened a debate in Washington between what the New York Times columnist David Brooks called gradualist hawks and confrontationalist hawks over whether to use slow steady pressure or massive force.
The Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said US strategy was to "recover each of these places and put them firmly back under civilian control, under the control of the Iraqi interim government, so that elections can be held".
The National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, denied that Fallujah had been ceded, saying the Iraqi Prime Minister was talking to the people there on how to hold elections.
However, some Republicans express scepticism about the election strategy working. Senator Chuck Hagel said: "There's no question we're in a lot of trouble", and that new policy options may have to be explored if elections failed.
On the Democratic side, a former UN ambassador, Mr Richard Holbrooke, accused the President of "creating a mess worse than Vietnam", and Senator Joe Biden said if elections were not successful the new president could "inherit a Lebanon."
On cable television, military commentators are growing increasingly critical. A retired general, Mr Barry McCaffrey, a TV military analyst, warned that the situation was in danger of getting out of control and could decide the US election.
The American response to the insurrection is also straining US relations with its allies in the region. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mr Abdullah Gul, has warned Mr Powell that Ankara would stop co-operating with the US in Iraq if American forces continued to harm the Turkish minority in northern Iraq, many of whom died in a US assault on the town of Tal Afar.
Meanwhile Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday implied a link with the 9/11 attacks in the US and terrorist acts in Russia.
"A lot of our European friends have been somewhat ambivalent about this whole proposition with respect to how we deal with these terrorist attacks. I think some have hoped that if they kept their heads down and stayed out of the line of fire, they wouldn't get hit," he said.
"I think what happened in Russia now demonstrates pretty conclusively that everybody is a target. Russia, of course, did not support us in Iraq.
"They've gotten hit anyway."