The Washington Post and the New Yorker magazine reported over the weekend that such planning was under way. U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence officials have told Knight Ridder that plans for possible air attacks are being updated because they might be needed if Russia and China prevent the United Nations from imposing tough sanctions on Iran.

"I know here in Washington prevention means force. It doesn't mean force necessarily. In this case, it means diplomacy," Bush told students at Johns Hopkins University. "I read the articles in the newspapers this weekend. What you're reading is wild speculation."

The president's comments were his first public remarks on assertions made last week by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that Bush had authorized I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, at the time Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, to disclose selected portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate to a New York Times reporter.

Bush didn't say whether he'd intended that the declassified information be shared with a reporter. But he said he thought that the information, much of which turned out to be inaccurate, needed to get out in public to battle critics who were suggesting that the White House had manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to help make its case for war against Iraq.

"I will say this, that after we liberated Iraq, there was questions in people's minds about the basis on which I made statements, in other words, going into Iraq," Bush told students at Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. "And so I decided to declassify the NIE for a reason ... I thought it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches."

Bush authorized the release shortly after former Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an article that appeared on July 6, 2003, in The New York Times charging that the administration's claim that Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from Niger was false.

In a court filing last week, Fitzgerald said Libby had told a federal grand jury that he had a conversation with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, "only after the Vice President advised the defendant that the President specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE."

Libby's conversation with Miller came under scrutiny as part of Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked information that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA officer after her name appeared in an article by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

No one has been charged with revealing Plame's name. Libby is charged with five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI about the case. If convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine.

The disclosure that Bush and Cheney had authorized Libby to talk about the intelligence estimate has raised new questions about the administration's candor about what it knew about Iraq's weapons programs.

By the time Libby disclosed portions of the estimate, the Niger allegation already had been largely discredited, and much of the other classified information that administration officials revealed about Iraq was wrong, exaggerated or disputed.

Bush also didn't directly address a question about the contention in Fitzgerald's filing that some documents the prosecution had given to Libby for Libby's defense "could be characterized as reflecting a plan to discredit, punish, or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson."

The contention appears at least twice in the 39-page filing.

Wilson has accused the White House of leaking Plame's identity to retaliate against him for criticizing the administration's Niger uranium claim.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said he couldn't comment on whether there was an effort to discredit Wilson and Plame, citing Fitzgerald's ongoing investigation.

A September 30, 2005 Washington Post story noted: "As part of a Texas redistricting that DeLay engineered and that led to Republicans gaining five seats in that state, DeLay's district lost some GOP voters."

(On Franken, an October 22 NewsBusters item, with video, recounted: "And so basically, what it looks like is going to happen is that Libby and Karl Rove are going to be executed" because "outing a CIA agent is treason," left-wing author and radio talk show host Al Franken asserted, to audience laughter, on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman. Franken qualified his hard-edged satire: "Yeah. And I don't know how I feel about it because I'm basically against the death penalty, but they are going to be executed it looks like." Franken later suggested that President Bush is at risk of receiving the same punishment, since Karl Rove likely told him what he did, but he added a caveat: "I think, by the way, that we should never ever, ever, ever execute a sitting President.")

Brief transcripts of the two portions of the April 7 Real Time with Bill Maher quoted above:

Bill Sammon, Washington Examiner: "A lot of critics are conflating the two and are saying that because Bush disclosed this piece of information, they're implying that Bush leaked the name."

Ben Affleck: "He probably also leaked the name. There's just no proof of that."

Sammon: "Even the prosecutor, even Fitzgerald is saying Bush didn't leak the name. So let's be clear, Bush didn't leak Valerie Plame's name -- not that we know of."

Affleck: "Because if he did, you can be hung for that! That's treason!"

Bill Maher: "That is treason."

Affleck: "You could be killed. That's not a joking around Tom DeLay 'I'll do a year, I bribed the state officials with corporate money.' That's like they shoot you in the battlefield for doing that. Don't you think we should find out who leaked that name?"

And moments later:

Maher proposed that Tom DeLay is "the poster boy for the kind of getting paid off, sludge fund, influence-peddling [said "petting"], crony capitalism that has turned America into something less than a first-rate power."

Sammon: "...You're right that he is the poster boy for the left. He's the guy the left loves to hate and his departure means you can't use his name to raise funds anymore. His departure means his seat will probably go to a Republican this time. His departure mean-"

Maher: "A Democrat, you mean?"

Sammon: "No, if he'd of stayed in the race he probably would have lost. By getting out, he actually makes it more likely for that to go to a Republican. "

Affleck: "Tom DeLay personally gerrymandered that district so severely that it looks like a map of Italy, you know what I mean?. There won't be a Democrat elected in that seat for a thousand years. You can't say he's the poster boy for the left. He happens to be an incredibly powerful Republican who is a criminal and now you blame Democrats for pointing it out!" (Loud applause)

After the revelation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former vice presidential chief of staff, testified that President Bush allegedly authorized him to disclose classified portions of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) pertaining to Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction, Fox News largely ignored the story, preferring instead to focus on the controversy surrounding Rep. Cynthia McKinney's (D-GA) alleged altercation with a Capitol Police officer. A Media Matters for America review of Fox News coverage of these two events found that from noon to 10:00 p.m. ET on April 6, Fox News devoted more than twice as much time discussing McKinney's alleged altercation with the police officer (53 minutes) than to reporting on the revelation that Bush may have authorized Libby to reveal then-classified intelligence information to the media (25 minutes). Libby's revelation was drawn from court papers FBI special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald filed in the government's case against Libby, who has been charged with five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to the FBI, related to the leak of then-CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame's identity.

The New York Sun, which broke the story and posted the "Web Exclusive" to its website at 9:02 a.m. ET on April 6, reported that Libby "testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded 'National Intelligence Estimate' on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case." As an April 6 Associated Press report noted:

[T]he disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The authorization came as the Bush administration faced mounting criticism about its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main reason the president and his aides had given for going to war.

Both MSNBC and CNN first covered the story at the top of the noon hour, and spent significant time throughout the day reporting on the breaking news. By contrast, Fox News did not initially report on the findings until approximately 12:20 p.m. and then apparently decided, as conservative talk show host and columnist Larry Elder later stated during the April 6 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, to "get back to the real issue, here": Cynthia McKinney.

As illustrated by the graphs below, Fox News devoted twice the amount of coverage to the McKinney incident, her April 6 apology to Congress, and speculation over whether she would be indicted for the incident, as it devoted to covering the latest developments in the CIA leak investigation.

From noon to 10:00 p.m., Fox News anchors, commentators, reporters, and guests mentioned Bush's alleged authorization a mere 11 times as opposed to 21 mentions of the McKinney controversy. They spent approximately 25 minutes discussing the news of the alleged leak compared to 53 minutes spent on the latest development in the McKinney incident. In fact, while every Fox News program between noon and 10:00 p.m. featured at least one report on McKinney, several shows -- including Your World with Neil Cavuto and The O'Reilly Factor -- did not report on Libby at all.

 

During the 9 p.m. hour, Hannity & Colmes spent approximately 11 minutes covering McKinney, compared with about 1 minute discussing the CIA leak investigation. Except for a news brief, the program mentioned Libby only during a debate over the McKinney controversy, when co-host Alan Colmes asked Elder if it was correct that Republicans "would rather talk about Cynthia McKinney" than "about the leak information that came out today." Elder responded:

ELDER: Well, I guess that's why you brought it up. Bringing up the "Scooter" Libby thing because that's what you really want to talk about. Let's get back to the real issue, here [McKinney].

Further, according to her website, Fox News host Greta van Susteren admitted that her show, On the Record, which airs at 10:00 p.m. ET, also did not cover the Libby story. Van Susteren stated that she "pulled the plug on doing the segment after spending about two hours studying the pleadings" because "the more I studied it, the more I realized that it is complicated and I want to make sure I get it right."

Continuing, van Susteren suggested that Fox News had adequately covered the story and stated that she would cover it the following night only if she could figure out how to "do it differently from what has already been done" or if "some new information emerges today":

This is not to take from the many other news organizations -- and my own -- who covered the story, I just wanted to study it further. It is a very important story and since so many shows were doing it, I felt comfortable being a bit more cautious and pulling back.

[...]

If I can figure out how to advance the story, or do it differently from what has already been done, we will cover it on our show tonight. I also need to measure in my mind whether it has been done and done and done in the last 24 hours and if we are now too late (because I dragged my feet yesterday!) If some new information emerges today, then even if the story was done by everyone yesterday -- and it was -- it becomes a new story today.

Moreover, as TVNewser reported on April 7, Fox News failed to cover the White House briefing, where press secretary Scott McClellan "was quizzed about Bush's involvement in the leaks." Both CNN and MSNBC aired portions of McClellan's April 7 White House press briefing.

From the April 6 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

COLMES: Larry, you know, on a day when we find out, that according to "Scooter" Libby, that President Bush leaked information, leaked it for his own well-being, and Cheney was involved, as well, Republicans, I guess, would rather talk about Cynthia McKinney, who, in fact, did apologize. I guess that's easier, or better for the Republican agenda than to talk about the leak information that came out today. Right?

ELDER: Well, I guess that's why you brought it up. Bringing up the "Scooter" Libby thing because that's what you really want to talk about. Let's get back to the real issue, here.

COLMES: I think it's more important for the country.

These are, of course, statements open to interpretation. How much, after all, do any of us really know ourselves? How much, many have asked, does this President really know himself. How much harder it will certainly be for him to know himself now that he has become the contortionist-in-chief, the human Pretzeldent. Given where they are, how could one of his hands be responsible for knowing what the other hand actually did. Perhaps the explanation for all this is simple enough: As our commander-in-chief in time of "war" (as defined and declared by him) and our all-powerful "unitary executive" (as defined and declared by a coterie of lawyers around the Vice President's office), he simply claimed the right to declassify not just top-secret documents, but himself whenever he wanted. After all, being President means, as George demonstrated only recently, never having to say you're sorry, even when you flip-flop on a significant issue.

On the other hand, perhaps the Vice-President was lying about the President. Maybe it was Dick who wielded the power of declassification and made that NIE available to his chief of staff -- or rather cherry-picked already discredited parts of an NIE already filled with cherry-picked factoids about oh-so-invadable Iraq. After all, we learned only a month and a half ago that the President had quietly issued Executive Order 13292 back in 2003, for the first time in history granting a Vice President the same right to declassify secret documents as the President. Increasingly, secret is as secret does.

Or maybe Libby is simply ratting on his former boss. Outing the guy who left him out to twist, twist in the wind. Or maybe...

But let me stop there. The Bush administration increasingly has all the charm -- and given its ever-sinking polling figures, all the popularity -- of a late Byzantine court. So let me turn the rest of this Toad's Wild Ride of an inside-the-Beltway Imax 3-D extravaganza over to former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega. Let her direct you to the right questions to ask to unravel our present magical mystery tour of this labyrinth of a case in which, it looks increasingly apparent, Bush and Co. have lost their way.

Internet journalist Jason Leopold, by the way, reports "that soon, new information will emerge from the special counsel's office that will prove President Bush had prior knowledge of the White House campaign to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." Coming next week: The President and Vice President claim the right to impeach Congress. Tom

Final Jeopardy

Asking the Right Question About the President's Involvement in the CIA Leak Affair

By Elizabeth de la Vega

The latest in a parade of horrors emanating from the Bush administration appeared Thursday in the form of a revelation buried in papers filed in federal court by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in his investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, now under indictment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, told the Grand Jury Fitzgerald convened that President Bush had -- via Vice President Cheney -- authorized him to disclose selected information from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, which he did during a private breakfast meeting at the St. Regis Hotel on July 8, 2003.

On Friday, in a press conference that bore a striking similarity to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine, President Bush's spokesman Scott McClellan dutifully responded to reporters' questions about the disclosure. No, the increasingly robotic McClellan said, the White House will not comment on an ongoing case. But, he assured the assembled journalists, the President can declassify whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants. So, McClellan implied, it would have been perfectly legal for the President to have taken this action, which he could not, of course, comment on because this was an ongoing case (and so on).

Thus has begun a debate in our media whose starting questions usually run along the lines of: "Is what the President did legal?" or "Does the President have authority to declassify information at will?" (Given the President's failure to deny Libby's allegation, it has largely been accepted as true.) The answer to those questions has generally been: Yes, the President -- as chief executive -- has the authority to declassify information at will.

But it is not only in the TV game show world of Jeopardy! that the correct answer to a problem depends on the question asked. And, as it happens, those are simply not the right questions.

In order to decide what legal issues arise from a given set of facts -- in other words, in order to frame the right questions -- we first have to determine what the facts are. This is what we know, in summary, about the CIA leak case.

We know that Valerie Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson had been an extremely painful thorn in the side of the Bush administration long before he wrote the infamous July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald described as having been viewed "in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."

In March of 2003, Wilson had become increasingly vocal in questioning the administration's reasons for war. In a Nation article and a March 2 appearance on CNN, as well as a March 4 panel on Ted Koppel's Nightline, Wilson argued that the White House wanted to invade Iraq, not because of weapons of mass destruction, but because it wanted to redraw the map of the Middle East. Wilson's criticisms coincided with those of David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, who was questioning the President's false and misleading arguments that aluminum tubes intercepted en route to Iraq had been meant for an Iraqi nuclear program.

Fueling the fire, on March 7, Mohammed El Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had flatly declared that there was no evidence the Iraqis were reconstituting a nuclear-weapons program, pointing out that neither the aluminum tubes claim nor the attempted-purchase-of-uranium-in-Niger claim were valid. Indeed, El Baradei explained, the documents relating to an attempted purchase of uranium were obvious forgeries. The next day, a "senior administration official" was quoted in the Washington Post as saying in response to El Baradei's statement, "We fell for it." Then Wilson appeared again on CNN and said, essentially, that the senior administration official was either lying or incompetent because analysts from several different intelligence agencies already knew of the forgeries.

Quite obviously, then, Joseph Wilson had the attention of the Bush administration as early as March 2003, long before he wrote the July 6 op-ed. And it was on March 23 that President Bush issued an amended executive order in which he claimed the right to expand Vice President Cheney's authority to declassify documents.

We also know that the President's glow from the "Mission Accomplished" spectacle had barely dimmed by May 6, 2003 when Joseph Wilson resurfaced in a Nicholas Kristof New York Times column which described "an unnamed former ambassador's" trip to Niger as casting doubt on the accuracy of the "sixteen words" relating to uranium procurements from Africa that had been in the President's State of the Union address that January. At this point, of course, Wilson would be seen as directly attacking both the President and the Vice President.

Moreover, throughout May and June, questions about the missing weapons of mass destruction increased in volume and intensity in the media and in press conferences. as did concerns about Joseph Wilson. Then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on June 8 to rebut the charges, making her famous "maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency" comment about the CIA. By the end of June 2003, more than a dozen top administration officials, including Rice and Cheney, who were known to be the President's closest advisers, were intensely involved in dealing with the problem of Joseph Wilson and his allegations. Under the circumstances, it is impossible to believe that President Bush was either unaware of, or indifferent to, the issue. Clearly he was well aware of his slowly waning credibility, as evidenced by the surfacing of a new administration theme in June: the deriding of "revisionist historians" who were questioning the pre-war intelligence.

We also know that the debate about the Bush administration's grounds for war had been raging since before the war began. In fact, it had been raging since before Congress voted to authorize the war. We know now that the National Intelligence Estimate, which was prepared in early October 2002, contained numerous qualifiers and caveats that were omitted from the minimalist, unclassified "White Paper" version issued simultaneously. At the time, and up to the start of the war, numerous congresspersons and others had made public and private pleas to the administration to declassify the NIE so there could be a reasoned debate about the issues. But the administration had steadfastly refused, citing national security concerns, even though debate about the evidence for war -- the aluminum tubes, the Niger uranium, the existence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda -- continued both before and after the invasion.

What was different in June 2003 when the President evidently did decide to declassify bits of the NIE? The answer is: He was kicking off his reelection campaign. As Helen Thomas wrote on Friday, June 27, 2003, "President George W. Bush is trying to scoop up an historic $200 million at political fundraising events to kick off his reelection campaign." He had raised close to $10 million over the previous week and had more events "slated for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Tampa before the end of July."

A perfect storm looked to be forming: four months of criticism by Joseph Wilson, mounting questions and criticism about pre-war intelligence and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction -- and the kick off to Bush's historic $200 million reelection campaign. That was the state of affairs on July 6, 2003 when Joseph Wilson's op-ed appeared. And as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald put it in the filing revealed last week, "The evidence will show that [it] was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."

Can anyone doubt, under these circumstances, that President Bush did in fact authorize Cheney to tell Libby to leak previously classified parts of the October 2002 NIE to Judith Miller? Of course not -- especially when the White House's response has not been to deny it, but to say that the President can declassify whatever he wants at his whim.

There is, however, one remaining piece of the puzzle. Libby testified that he was specifically authorized to speak to Judith Miller by Cheney and to disclose "key judgments" from the NIE because the document was "pretty definitive" against what Wilson had said; and Cheney thought it was "very important" for the key judgments of the NIE to come out. Libby testified that he questioned Cheney about whether he could do this and the Vice President later came back and said the President had authorized it. According to Libby, Cheney told him to tell Miller that a "key judgment" of the NIE said that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium in Africa. Libby said he was also told by Cheney to disclose documents, including a brief abstract of the NIE's key judgments, which was one of the reasons the meeting was held at a hotel. Libby insisted that he not be named as a source: he wanted to be described as a "former Hill staffer." In addition, Libby testified, he discussed with Miller the contents of a still-classified CIA report -- which Libby told Miller had been written by Joseph Wilson -- that described a 1999 visit to Niger by a group of Iraqis who allegedly wanted to purchase uranium. Libby believed that only he, Cheney, and the President knew about the secret declassification; he did not reveal it to anyone during the formal declassification process that ensued.

Libby's account raises too many issues to address, not the least of which is that he had already spoken to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about the still-classified NIE in June. Two other key issues, however, relate to the information Libby was instructed to disclose. First, the NIE Key Judgments did not say that the Iraqis were "vigorously trying to procure" uranium from Africa. They said nothing whatsoever about uranium procurements. The body of the NIE included some vague assertions about such procurement efforts, but even those had been repudiated by the CIA in October 2002. In addition, as President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Lewis Libby all knew, the documents supporting the assertions had been proved to be forgeries by both U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. In other words, it is clear that this secret disclosure of unilaterally declassified material from the NIE. was at best seriously misleading, if not entirely false.

That the contents of another disclosed document had been written by Joseph Wilson, as Libby told Miller, was equally false and no less misleading, because Wilson did not write any report whatsoever after his trip to Niger. He orally reported his findings to the CIA.

Scott McClellan now says that this declassification and instantaneous disclosure was prompted by the public interest in contributing to the understanding of an ongoing debate. We know that is not true.

After all, before the war, the existence of a crucial debate about whether pre-war intelligence justified an invasion of Iraq was not considered sufficient cause to impel President Bush to decide to declassify the NIE. After the war, when no weapons of mass destruction were being found, the existence of debate about pre-war intelligence did not impel Bush to declassify the NIE. Even today, most of the NIE, including the one-page President's Summary, is not declassified.

We now have sufficient information to frame the Final Jeopardy! question. This is it:

Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading -- portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

The answer is obvious: No. Such a misuse of authority is the very essence of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. It is also precisely the abuse of executive power that led to the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon.

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Her pieces have appeared in The Nation magazine, the L.A. Times, Salon, and Mother Jones. She writes regularly for TomDispatch. She may be contacted at ElizabethdelaVega@Verizon.net

With less than seven months remaining before the midterm elections, Bush's political troubles already appear to be casting a long shadow over them. Barely a third of registered voters, 35 percent, approve of the way the Republican-led Congress is doing its job -- the lowest level of support in nine years.

The negative judgments about the president and the congressional majority reflect the breadth of the GOP's difficulties and suggest that the problems of each may be mutually reinforcing. Although the numbers do not represent a precipitous decline over recent surveys, the fact that they have stayed at low levels over recent months indicates that the GOP is confronting some fundamental obstacles with public opinion rather than a patch of bad luck.

A majority of registered voters, 55 percent, say they plan to vote for the Democratic candidate in their House district, while 40 percent support the Republican candidate. That is the largest share of the electorate favoring Democrats in Post-ABC polls since the mid-1980s.

This grim news for the GOP is offset somewhat by the finding that 59 percent of voters still say they approve of their own representative. But even these numbers are weaker than in recent off-year election cycles and identical to support of congressional incumbents in June 1994 -- five months before Democrats lost control of Congress to Republicans.

As Bush and the Republicans falter, Democrats have emerged as the party most Americans trust to deal with such issues as Iraq, the economy and health care. By 49 to 42 percent, Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans to do a better job of handling Iraq.

Democrats also hold a six-percentage-point advantage over the GOP (49 percent to 43 percent) as the party most trusted to handle the economy. Their lead swells to double digits on such as issues as immigration (12 points), prescription drug benefits for the elderly (28 points), health care (32 points) and dealing with corruption in Washington (25 points).

The public divides evenly on only one issue: terrorism, with 46 percent expressing more confidence in the Democrats and 45 percent trusting Republicans on a top voting concern that the GOP counts on dominating.

But there is plenty of time left before Election Day for Republicans to take back ground they have lost to Democrats -- or for Democrats to solidify their recent gains. In the past year, public attitudes toward Bush and the Republicans have been driven by the news. Bush's popularity rebounded at the end of last year in response to the democratic elections in Iraq and renewed optimism about the economy at home -- only to stumble as the deadly insurgency continued and scandals in Congress and the White House drove down perceptions of the president and his party.

A total of 1,027 randomly selected adults were interviewed April 6 to 9 for this survey. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for the overall results.

Bush's job approval rating has remained below 50 percent for nearly a year. Perhaps more ominous for the president, 47 percent in the latest poll say they "strongly" disapprove of Bush's handling of the presidency -- more than double the 20 percent who strongly approve. It marked the second straight month that the proportion of Americans intensely critical of the president was larger than his overall job approval rating. In comparison, the percentage who strongly disapproved of President Bill Clinton on that measure never exceeded 33 percent in Post-ABC News polls.

The public is even more critical of Bush's performance in specific areas. On six of seven key issues, fewer than half of the respondents approve of the job Bush is doing, while majorities express dissatisfaction with him on Iraq (62 percent), health care (62 percent) and immigration (61 percent).

Four in 10 -- 40 percent -- say Bush is doing a good job with the economy, down eight percentage points in a month. One reason for the drop may be the recent sharp increase in fuel costs. Fewer than one in four approve of his handling of gasoline prices, virtually the same as last summer when gas prices topped $3 a gallon. Overall, 44 percent said the increases are causing "serious hardship" in their family, up significantly from August.

Half of the public now disapproves of the way Bush is handling the fight against terrorism, an issue on which majorities of Americans had typically given him high marks until last year.

The depth of public dissatisfaction with Bush and the highly partisan nature of the criticism are underscored by public attitudes toward efforts by some in Congress to censure him or impeach him for his actions as president.

Democratic and Republican congressional leaders view both scenarios as remote possibilities. Still, more than four in 10 Americans -- 45 percent -- favor censuring or formally reprimanding Bush for authorizing wiretaps of telephone calls and e-mails of terrorism suspects without court permission. Two-thirds of Democrats and half of all independents, but only one in six Republicans, support censuring Bush, the poll found.

Last month, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced a resolution in the Senate to censure Bush. A majority of Americans, 56 percent, said his move was driven more by politics than by principle.

Calls to impeach Bush are not resonating beyond Democratic partisans. One-third of Americans, including a majority of Democrats (55 percent), favor impeaching Bush and removing him from office. But more than nine in 10 Republicans and two-thirds of independents oppose impeachment.

The ongoing bloodshed and political chaos in Iraq continue to drag down support for the war, the survey found. Barely four in 10 -- 41 percent -- say the war is worth fighting, down five percentage points since December. Although more than half of Americans think troop levels in Iraq should be decreased, only 15 percent are calling for an immediate withdrawal, a figure that has not varied much over the past year.