With the neocons' fortress crumbling there are other signs of conservatives' uprising as the angry Republican activists confronted some time back the President's envoys during tense closed door meetings over the nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. These together with American casualties -- over two hundred in Afghanistan and two thousand in Iraq, the festering wounds that refuse to heal -- have been fast weakening the Bush presidency and have made a major contribution to its current low standing. They bring Bush approval rating to its lowest ebb raising apprehension that in the first year of his second term George Bush may have become a lane duck president.

Coming when Bush is recording his lowest ever job approval an analyst as sober as John Kenneth White of Catholic University has described Bush's predicament as a presidency on life support. Noting the precipitous decline in Bush's ratings from the moderates and independents Kenneth White argues that the continuing problems -- notably the losing war in Iraq, the high cost of gasoline and home-heating fuels and an unending stream of deficits -- are likely to plague Bush indefinitely.

Driven once by pride and arrogance two of the US' star presidents, Nixon and Reagan were caught up with the trauma of Watergate and Irangate, respectively. The first indictment of Bush presidency has come to be popularly known as Plamegate after the name of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame whose husband Wilson was sent to Niger as ambassador to ascertain if Iraq had made purchases of uranium from that country. Though Wilson's report ruled this out the president and his senior aides continued to accuse Iraq for having imported materials to make WMD -- a blackmail of sorts to drum up support for Iraq invasion. When an outraged Wilson decided to speak out publicly, the conservative journalists were, in retaliation, informed of the identity of Wilson's wife -- a serious violation of US law and punishable by long prison term.

The administration's denial of any involvement in the episode led to the special prosecutor initiating his investigation into the role of Lewis Libby and others in the cover-up. The five count indictment against Libby, the chief of staff of the powerful vice president Dick Cheney and investigation against Karl Rove, the president's most important adviser, point to more fundamental ethical issues that are even more disturbing to the Americans: did the president and his administration knowingly lie to the Congress and the people?

The whistle has also been blown by the insider like colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who was Colin Powell's right hand man for 16 years as the chief of staff of the State Department. Wilkerson skewered President Bush, saying the US leader was not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either," Wilkerson has accused Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of creating a 'cabal' in the Oval office that has virtually hijacked US foreign policy.

Reading between the lines of various Pentagon reports and the testimonies the officials have offered in the Congress, it seems that not only are Iraqi security forces (meant for eventually relieving the US troops in Iraq) ill trained and ill equipped they have little chance of becoming an effective force anytime soon. Of the $10.6bn allocated to the Pentagon for equipping the Iraqi forces $ 7bn have already been spent. But reports indicate that the Iraqis are still deficient of body armour making them more vulnerable than the better equipped American counterparts. How much of this huge money has been misspent is difficult to be found out but some independent audit reports point to wastage while the general impression continues to be that in this area as in others the American defence industries have been doing well for themselves.

On the economic front, the reports suggest that the availability of potable water, electricity and fuel for cars remains exactly as spotty as during the last days of Saddam's regime. This despite the fact that, according to reports of the American inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, 93 per cent of $30bn provided by the Americans had been committed and theoretically 1837 of 2794 reconstruction projects had been completed. The report highlights the fact that some 25 per cent of the fund expended have gone to provide security for workers against insurgency.

On the domestic front, the president's credibility and reputation have received a massive battering from hurricane Katrina when he was shown to be not only slow and inefficient in response to the disaster, but also insensitive and callous to the pain and suffering of fellow Americans, most of whom incidentally happened to be blacks and Hispanics. Much of the blame could perhaps have been better laid at the door of city and state authorities but the revelation that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FENA) head was the product of Bush's cronyism marred all efforts of the president in reducing the sufferings of the victims.

The latest polls show that the majority of Americans now believe that the invasion of Iraq was wrong and there is a public clamour, duly mirrored in the Congress, for setting a date for the withdrawal of US troops from that country. Bush's repeated speech emphasising that by fighting terrorists in Iraq he was defending America against further terrorist attacks now find little resonance. On the contrary a large section of American public opinion has come out in opposition to American presence in Iraq.

The only practical and acceptable way to improve the image of Bush presidency is to abandon its doctrine of preemptive war and an advocacy of regime change and to renew its pledges to various international treaties and understandings. Richard Hass, a former official in both the Clinton and Bush Administration calls for an 'integration doctrine'. In his latest book 'The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course' Hass suggests that it would serve US' interests to abandon hubristic ideas of her indispensability and to temper its unilateralism by pragmatic, mutually beneficial cooperation with emerging centres of powers. Hass also points out that while "the US does not need the world's permission to act, it does need world's support to succeed."

But will there be any taker of the ideas from among the fraying administration of President Bush to tide over its crisis?

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.