President George W. Bush receiving an update on the situation in Iraq in his Crawford, Texas, ranch with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. (AFP)

Washington, April 10: Explosive violence in Iraq and persistent questions about the administration’s handling of terrorist threats before September 11, 2001, have plunged President Bush into one of the most difficult moments of his presidency.

In the face of these challenges, Bush has yielded the stage, remaining largely out of sight at his Texas ranch as others in his administration explain his policies. Bush’s silence in the face of mounting US casualties in Iraq and concerns about the administration's timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis has brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

“If it were I in charge over there, I would have him out early next week to explain this whole thing,” said a Republican strategist close to the Bush team who demanded anonymity as a condition of speaking freely about the administration. “He should restate what we’re doing over there. He needs to provide a bigger picture to give voters more confidence that we know where we’re going.”

“It is not helping them for the President to be out of the picture,” said Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, national security adviser in the Clinton administration. “If they think the American people are not troubled with what they see every day, starting with [the killing of four US contract workers in] Falluja, and then dead Marines and then the hostages — if they think that is not roiling the waters, they’re sadly mistaken... We have too much at stake in Iraq to lose the American people.”

Bush’s advisers expect political damage to the President, at least in the short term, given what has happened in Iraq in the past 10 days. “I think the American people know the President is resolved in this matter to complete our work,” White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday.

“We have nothing to suggest that they don’t support him on the war on terror... I think you can expect polls to drop during this very difficult period.”

But if administration officials anticipate an erosion in Bush’s support, Senator John F. Kerry, the President’s challenger, may have a difficult time converting that into support for his candidacy. Kerry has criticised Bush repeatedly this week for failing to cede more authority to the UN and to develop broader international support, but his own past positions on Iraq make his manoeuvering room limited.

Administration officials said Bush will re-emerge tomorrow, when he goes to nearby Fort Hood to meet with the families of soldiers in Iraq. He will be out in public again on Monday when he appears at a news conference with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

But as Bush prepares to speak out, the stakes for him are considerably higher than they were only a few weeks ago, despite three hours of testimony by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice before the independent commission investigating the 2001 attacks and assurances by defence secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and military commanders that they are dealing with the uprisings in Iraq.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Bush is “absolutely” losing the public at a quickening pace. He said people are flooding him with pleas “to get us out of there.” “It’s a disquieting feeling people have. They think the President does not have a plan, and he doesn’t... We are on the verge of losing control of Iraq.”