The White House gathering was part of a series of high-profile meetings Bush is holding to search for "a new way forward" amid the increasing chaos and carnage in Iraq. Earlier in the day, Bush met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other high-ranking officials at the State Department, where he was briefed on reconstruction and regional diplomatic efforts in Iraq.

The military experts met with Bush, Vice President Cheney and about a dozen aides for more than an hour. The visitors told the officials that the situation in Iraq is as dire as the study group had indicated but that alternative approaches must be considered, said one participant in the meeting. In addition, the experts agreed that the president should review his national security team, which several characterized as part of the problem.

"I don't think there is any doubt in his mind about how bad it is," the source said.

The group disagreed on the key issue of whether to send more troops to Iraq, with retired Gen. John M. Keane arguing that several thousand additional soldiers could be used to improve security in Baghdad, and others expressing doubt about that proposal, according to sources at the meeting. But the five agreed in telling Bush that the Army and Marine Corps both need to be bigger, and also need bigger budgets.

The group suggested the president shake up his national security team. "All of us said they have failed, that you need a new team," said one participant. That recommendation is likely to fuel Pentagon rumors that Bush and his new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, may decide to replace Marine Gen. Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

White House officials emphasized that although the experts gave a bleak assessment, they still believe the situation in Iraq is "winnable."

"I appreciate the advice I got from those folks in the field," Bush said after emerging from the morning session. "And that advice is . . . an important component of putting together a new way forward in Iraq."

The carefully choreographed meetings are coming on the heels of the release last week of the Iraq Study Group's report, which pronounced the situation in Iraq "grave" and recommended fundamental shifts in how the Bush administration handles the war. To stem the deteriorating situation in Iraq, the report said, the administration should shift the focus of its military mission from direct combat to training Iraqi troops, while pressing harder for a diplomatic solution by engaging Iran and Syria -- something Bush has pointedly refused to do.

Yesterday's meetings are to be followed today by a videoconference with military commanders before Bush receives Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi at the White House. On Wednesday, Bush is scheduled to meet with his outgoing defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and another group of military experts.

Coming amid growing public discontent with the war and the defeat of his party in last month's congressional elections, the president's very public review of his Iraq policy is expected to culminate in a major address in which he will lay out what the administration has billed as a "new way forward" in the nearly four-year-old conflict. Press secretary Tony Snow said the administration is hoping for the president to deliver the speech before Christmas, although he said the timing has not been nailed down.

Even as the president has been reviewing his approach to the war, he has not backed off his position that victory in Iraq is crucial to victory in a larger fight against terrorism. Bush also calls it essential for Iraq to be stabilized as a functioning democracy -- a sweeping goal on which the Iraq Study Group's report was notably silent.

"Iraq is a central component of defeating the extremists who want to establish safe haven in the Middle East, extremists who would use their safe haven from which to attack the United States," Bush said. "This is really the calling of our time, that is, to defeat the extremists and radicals."

When the White House review began, the interagency group debated whether to try to beat the Iraqi Study Group's report or let it play out and then look "bigger and better" by doing a report later, said an official familiar with the discussions. It was agreed to wait. But the emphasis throughout the month-long process has been to produce a strategy that would be deliberately distinct, the official added.

The White House review does not have the depth or scope of the Iraq Study Group's, according to officials familiar with the deliberations. "There's a lack of thinking on other big issues -- oil, the economy, infrastructure and jobs," said one source who was briefed on the interagency discussions and requested anonymity because talks are ongoing.

During yesterday's White House meeting, Bush asked all the questions, except for one at the end from Cheney, a source said. But Cheney took copious notes throughout, filling several pages, he said. "They didn't really reveal their own views" in their questions, said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, one of the five participants.

As a whole, the group of retired generals and academics who met Bush tend to be skeptical of the Iraq Study Group's proposals, and so were able to give him additional reasons to reject its recommendations.

The first to speak was Eliot A. Cohen, an expert in military strategy at Johns Hopkins University, who has criticized the study group's findings, particularly on engaging Iran and Syria and on decreasing combat troops. He was followed by Keane, McCaffrey and Wayne A. Downing, all retired four-star Army generals. Two have told friends they are skeptical of the study group's recommendation to cut U.S. combat forces over the next year while quadrupling the size of the training and advisory effort, which currently numbers around 4,000.

Pelosi's crusade against Bush and the war is good and bad news for the countless number of Gulf Coast residents still displaced by the Katrina ravage. They are just as needy, homeless and ignored more than year after Katrina struck. More than a half dozen reports issued on Katrina's first anniversary last September told the same grim story. Not one new house has been built from the billions Congress allocated for construction. Thousands of small businesses have still not received loans, most schools, and hospitals are still shuttered, and most buses aren't running in New Orleans. The debris and wrecked homes are still piled up high in the blackest and poorest neighborhoods. Thousands of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast poor are still jobless, and live in FEMA constructed trailers, and subsist on private donations. Only about half of New Orleans residents have been able to return to their homes due to the government's foot drag on dispensing more federal housing aid.

A day after Pelosi saber rattled Bush, an angry New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for the endless time lambasted Congress for continued delays on Katrina aid. He called the tormenting delays a "bureaucratic maze." It's much more than that. The massive funds promised and still needed for the colossal rebuilding effort aren't forthcoming because there hasn't been the political will or a sustained effort to finish the job. And that has frustrated the Congressional Black Caucus. The group has raised its voice the loudest and loneliest during the past year for Congress to do more to push Gulf rebuilding.

The Caucus's fight over Katrina is a litmus test that will determine how much clout it will have in a Democratic controlled House, as well as how much personal and political muscle Pelosi will put behind Gulf rebuilding.

The jury so far is way out on both. Even before Pelosi took the House leadership reins she publicly said little about Katrina aid. But during the same time she issued piles of statements and press releases on the war, and Republican sex and corruption scandals. The Caucus, meanwhile, put forth a carefully crafted and far-reaching reconstruction plan for the Gulf. It held press conferences, and virtually every week implored the Bush administration and Congress to jumpstart the flagging Katrina aid effort. For all the good it did, the Caucus might as well have held its news conferences and made its pleas from the far side of the Moon. They got almost no press ink and not much support from other House Democrats.

Now that she's in power, Pelosi has sent mixed signals about how much influence the Caucus will have in the new Congress. She has green lighted the takeover by the Caucus's ranking members of the powerful Judiciary, Ways and Means, and Intelligence Committees as well as another half dozen or more key sub-committees. But Pelosi hasn't said how vigorously she will push the Caucus's poverty reduction and justice issue agenda.

The take over of these committees and subcommittees is more than simply a reward for their longevity in the House and their loyal service to the Democratic Party. It's recognition of the hard political fact that blacks are the most loyal of Democrat shock troops, and did as much as any other voting group to insure the Democrat's November 7 triumph.

But Pelosi is hardly the only top Democrat that has been laggard on Gulf rebuilding. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards flailed away at Bush for his Katrina ineptitude, spoke in vague terms about Two Americas, and made a fleeting plea for a Marshall type plan to fight poverty, a plan doomed from the moment the call was made. While Edwards barnstorms the country crusading for more government initiatives to aid the poor, he holds no official position in the Democratic Party, and is largely a solitary voice crying in the wilderness on poverty.

Now that Pelosi and Congressional Democrats sniff Bush blood on Iraq, they will step up their attack. That will absorb much of their time, energy, and it will heighten public debate on Bush's failed war policy. That's a good thing. But Pelosi and the House Democrats also have an equal obligation to put time and energy, and to refocus public debate on Bush's equally failed policies at home. The languishing Katrina poor and needy is testament to the biggest of his failures.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and social issues commentator, and the author of the forthcoming book The Emerging Black GOP Majority (Middle Passage Press, September 2006), a hard-hitting look at Bush and The GOP's court of black voters.

The co-ordinated attack in Tayaran Square involved a suicide attacker who drove up to the day labourers, pretended to want to hire them, then set off his explosives as they got into his minibus, Lt. Bilal Ali said. At virtually the same time - 7 a.m. - a bomb exploded in a car parked about 30 metres away.

The blasts set fire to at least 10 other cars, Ali said. Gunfire - possibly from insurgent snipers or a police checkpoint in the area - erupted as people fled the scene.

He said at least 57 Iraqis, including seven policemen, were killed and 151 people were wounded.

Iraqis gather on the square early in the morning, soliciting jobs as construction workers, cleaners and painters. They buy breakfast at stands selling tea and egg sandwiches while they wait for potential employers to drive up.

Khalil Ibrahim, 41, a shop owner in the area, was treated at a hospital for shrapnel wounds to his head and back.

"In the first explosion, I saw people falling over, some of them blown apart. When the other bomb went off seconds later, it slammed me into a wall of my store and I fainted," he said.

Tayaran Square is located near several government ministries and a bridge that crosses the Tigris River to the heavily fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the U.S. and British embassies are located.

About a kilometre away, two roadside bombs targeting Iraqi police patrols exploded at 8:25 a.m. and 8:40 a.m., wounding two policemen and seven Iraqi civilians, said police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani.

The simultaneous explosions, which occurred about 100 feet apart, shattered windows in store fronts, left crafters and blood stains in the road, and set fire to least 10 other cars.

At least 57 Iraqis, including seven policemen, were killed in the attack and 151 people wounded, Ali said.

"In the first explosion, I saw people falling over, some of them blown apart. When the other bomb went off seconds later, it slammed me into a wall of my store and I fainted," said Khalil Ibrahim, 41, a shop owner.

When the attack occurred, police at a nearby checkpoint fired random shots in several directions, but residents soon rushed to the devastated area to see if friends or relatives had been killed or wounded.

In one area, mangled bodies were piled up at the side of the road and partially covered with paper. Two Iraqi men sat on a nearby pavement crying and sometimes covering their faces with their hands. Nearby, an older man dressed in a suit jacket and sweater, walked by in a daze with a bloody bandage tied around his head.

In Baghdad, where many people are unemployed, scores of Iraqis gather in the square early in the morning to wait for minibuses or private cars that stop by and hire them for the day as construction workers, cleaners or painters.

Nearby, small stands are set up to sell the labourers a breakfast of tea and egg sandwiches.

Tayaran Square is located near several government ministries and a bridge that crosses the Tigris River to the heavily fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the US and British embassies are located.

About one mile away, two roadside bombs targeting Iraqi police patrols also exploded at 8.25am and 8.40am, wounding two policemen and seven Iraqi civilians, said police Capt Mohammed Abdul-Ghani.

Both loud explosions could be heard in Tayaran Square.

Yesterday, at least 66 people were killed or found dead in the Baghdad area and northern Iraq.

They included 46 men who were bound, blindfolded and shot to death in the capital - the latest apparent victims of sectarian death squads.

A Marine helicopter also made a hard landing in a remote desert area of Anbar province, injuring 18 people, the third US aircraft to go down in the insurgent stronghold in two weeks.

The US military announced that three American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing north of the capital on Sunday, putting December on track to be one of the deadliest months of the war.

At least 2,934 members of the US military have died since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

The latest casualties underscored a major danger for Americans in Iraq, where the military relies heavily on air travel to transport troops and ferry officials and journalists to remote locations and to avoid the dangers of roadside bombs planted by insurgents.

The CH-53E Super Stallion, the US military's largest helicopter, was conducting a routine passenger and cargo flight with 21 people on board when it went down at about noon yesterday, the US command said, adding that hostile fire did not appear to be the cause.

Nine of the 18 injured were treated and returned to duty, it said. The military did not give the exact location where the hard landing occurred, saying recovery efforts were under way.

On December 3, a Sea Knight helicopter carrying 16 US troops went down in a lake, killing four. On November 27, a US Air Force fighter jet crashed in a field, killing the pilot. Both took place in Anbar, a volatile Sunni-dominated province west of Baghdad.

"At the very least, couldn't there have been a hearse to transport the fallen Soldier?" Hoag asked in an essay in Tuesday's Democrat and Chronicle newspaper. "At the very least, couldn't there have been a group of Soldiers to receive one of their own?

"It was a very sobering, sad experience for all of us," wrote Hoag, who said she witnessed the episode from a terminal window while waiting for a flight along with her sister-in-law and two friends. "Please don't let this happen again to any Soldier. Let's not treat our fallen troops like baggage."

Her account prompted Monroe County's executive, Maggie Brooks, to write a letter of her own to the Pentagon, asking it to change the policy for transporting the coffins of war casualties.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Cynthia Smith, said Hoag's description doesn't correlate with military procedure.

Remains of Soldiers killed in Iraq are taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, then usually flown to a Soldier's home, Smith said. Military escorts accompany each flight and when a casket reaches the home area, it is met by an honor guard of two people and then transported to a funeral home, she said.

Airport director David Damelio disputed Hoag's claims, saying a coffin wouldn't fit into a cart loaded with luggage.

Calls to Hoag's home in Dansville, 50 miles south of Rochester, went unanswered Thursday.