For now the American public – hardened by 9/11 and the real and fictional violence served up daily

For now, the American public – hardened by 9/11 and the real and fictional violence served up daily on TV – seem less concerned about the losses than do the generals and politicians.Moreover, Democrats, are having a hard job making political capital out of Iraq. As US troops wage pitched battles, politicians of both stripes dare not be seen to be deserting them. As she duelled with the commission members, the on-screen “crawls” beneath her face on the cable news channels told the true story of the day – the urban warfare, hostage-taking and general mayhem across Iraq, all part of an unravelling of US policy that could cost Mr Bush the presidency in November.Caution is in order. Nor are military casualties yet the potential tipping point, even though last week they were at a rate reminiscent of Vietnam.That war, however, lasted eight years and took 55,000 American lives. In the year since the Iraq invasion, about 650 US servicemen have been killed. Support for the war in Iraq has waned since the invasion a year ago, but public opinion has not turned decisively against it. Whatever Edward Kennedy may say, this is not “George W Bush’s Vietnam” – or not yet.

By and large, however, she countered the central charge of her former counter-terrorism deputy, Richard Clarke, that the Bush team was asleep at the wheel in the months before the attacks on New York and Washington.Alas for the President, the great Condi show, so keenly anticipated by connoisseurs of Washington scandal, was by Thursday a mere side-show to the real drama playing out 5,000 miles away. Ms Rice says the document merely assembled existing information, but some suspect it may have contained new warnings of an impending attack. By common consent she made a pretty good fist of it.Even so, the White House may not be home free. Despite separate objections by the President, at week’s end his aides were preparing to make public the text of the top-secret President’s Daily Briefing for 6 August 2001, which contained an assessment of the threat posed by al-Qa’ida. On Thursday, over the President’s initial vehement objections, his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, testified under oath to the special commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, obliged to defend her boss in the one area he had seemed impregnable, as the super-vigilant foe of global terrorism. Spring in central Texas is the loveliest season, when the fields are carpeted with bluebonnet wild flowers and the blistering heat of summer is still months away.

But that will be scant comfort for George W Bush during this Easter holiday at the ranch he calls Prairie Chapel.
In the all-embracing “war against terror”, stretching from 11 September 2001 to the plains of Iraq today, this has been his rockiest week. “We are finishing what should have been done in ‘92.”One of the few to express outright opposition to the war is Kenneth Brown, a 58-year-old African-American history professor from Michigan “Saddam never did anything against America,” he said. “Of course he was a bad person, but there are a lot of bad people in China. We don’t go after them.” Mr Brown is definitely not going to vote for George Bush, but still thinks he will win. “People want their President to be right.”The writer is a BBC News correspondent in Washington. Asked if he supports the war in Iraq, he replies, “Absolutely.