Bush: One year after Iraq
By Matt Frei
BBC Washington Correspondent
US casualties in Iraq continue to cause Bush a domestic headache
When President Bush launched the invasion of Iraq a year ago, it was widely believed in Washington that his administration wanted to get the war out of the way so that the fighting would not interfere with the campaign for his re-election.
The main part of the war lasted barely three weeks. The statue of Saddam was famously toppled on 9 April 2003.
But a year later, just as the election campaign is hotting up, American soldiers and civilians continue to die.
The toll of those killed since the end of major combat operations is now 432 - three times as high as the 139 killed during the invasion itself.
The cost of reconstruction is much higher than the original estimate. The transition to democracy and sovereignty looks shaky at best.
It is challenged every day by attacks against Iraqi civilians who co-operate with the occupation and by the fraught relationship between the country's Shia majority and beleaguered Sunni minority.
Pessimists now talk openly about the prospect of civil war once the Americans hand over sovereignty.
The war on terror
Al-Qaeda has clearly not been beaten into submission.
It has despatched hundreds, if not thousands of mujahideen to Iraq - a grim if ironic reminder of the mujahideen who once fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
We now know that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were never allies before the war, but al-Qaeda is currently fighting side by side with the remnants of the Baathist regime.
America's faulty assertion has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Meanwhile al-Qaeda and its allies have bombed targets from Istanbul to Madrid.
And the subsequent defeat of the Conservative Partido Popular of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, one of America's closest allies in the war against terror, may even be remembered as al-Qaeda's own first regime change.
Add to that the related costs: continued distrust on either side of the Atlantic, the huge embarrassment of those unfound weapons of mass destruction and, as Spain's election result shows, arguably a weakened and divided front in the war against terror.
Divided nation
Karl Rove, President Bush's political guru, likes to leave as little as possible to chance.
Iraq is a visible war and allows Bush to enhance his robust image as a man who goes after the bad guys
But in Iraq he has taken a massive gamble.
His administration is hostage to a fortune minted in the sands around Baghdad.
All this sounds like a nightmare scenario for a White House that may have blithely calculated that the Iraq War would turn out to be a sure election winner.
The truth turns out to be more prosaic.
The polls indicate that Iraq has divided this nation much like every other major issue.
Republicans on the whole support it. Democrats hate it.
Swing voters are split down the middle.
Opinion surveys also indicate that the electorate is more concerned about the economy than events in Iraq or the war against terror.
History tends to be on the side of the incumbent.
Americans need really strong reasons to throw out a sitting president and so far these reasons seem to missing for a robust majority.
Bush and Blair are still united despite the Madrid attacks
The White House has complimented history with its own message: why would you change your commander-in-chief in the middle of a war?
So, despite its casualties and its costs, the war in Iraq is at least a visible war as opposed to the invisible war against al-Qaeda.
It allows President Bush to be cheered by troops at military bases around America and to enhance his robust image as a man who goes after the bad guys.
Let's not forget that Saddam Hussein has been captured and the Iraqi people, according to every recent survey, do feel happier today than they did under the dictator.
But like any other war, this one is also full of risks that the White House may yet learn to regret.
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