Bush pleads for more time

Yesterday, he tried to buy a few more months

for his Iraq war plan after a blunt warning

from Republican congressmen that their patience

would not last beyond September

Even the lapdogs are turning against him

Republicans are fearful that they will lose

the White House and more seats in Congress

in elections next year if Bush's

troop surge policy continues indefinitely

and his popularity ratings,

slumped at around 30 per cent, do not improve

A "sobered" Bush was told by Republican allies yesterday that his party would desert him if the situation in Iraq did not improve dramatically and he continued to keep troops there.

For a White House where bad news is often branded as defeatism, the 90-minute meeting with 11 centrist Republicans was remarkably blunt as they told him that there had to be discernable progress by September.

Congressman Ray LaHood of Illinois, who took part, said: "The American people are war fatigued, the American people want to know that there's a way out."

Mr Bush, who is locked in a dispute with the Democrats over war funding, had been taken aback by what he heard.

"I don't know if surprised was the right word... maybe sobered. I don't know if he's gotten that kind of opinion before in such a frank and no-hold-barred way," said Mr LaHood.

Republicans are fearful that they will lose the White House and more seats in Congress in elections next year if Bush's troop surge policy continues indefinitely and his popularity ratings, slumped at around 30 per cent, do not improve.

Congressman Tom Davis told Mr Bush that the approval rating for the presidency was at five per cent in parts of his northern Virginia district.

Bush yesterday tried to buy a few more months for his Iraq war plan after a blunt warning by Republican congressmen that their patience would not last beyond September.

The president's plea for time, so the 30,000 additional forces he sent to Iraq could produce results, came as the House of Representatives was expected to vote on a spending bill to cut funding for the war by late July unless there are clear signs of progress on the ground.

Bush was prodded into action after moderate Republicans at a meeting in the White House told him that he could not count on the support of his party beyond September, when the commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is to deliver his progress report.

In remarks at the Pentagon, Mr Bush tried to release the growing pressure for a withdrawal of US forces, and asked Americans repeatedly to hold on at least until the general delivers his assessment.

"What we need to give Gen Petraeus is plenty of time to work," he told reporters. "This debate raging in Washington about how long we're going to be there - we haven't even got all our troops there."

Although such appeals from the White House have grown familiar in recent weeks, Mr Bush indicated that he realised the extent of war fatigue in the US.

He softened his opposition to the idea of drawing up measurable signs of improvement on the ground in Iraq and definable achievements from the government in Baghdad, and said he would now accept benchmarks.

However, he said he would veto any measure from a Democratic Congress that would link future funding of the war to such achievements. "We reject that idea. It won't work," he said.

The shift on benchmarks comes only two days after the president received what White House officials described as "unvarnished opinions" about the war from fellow Republicans, worried that public fatigue with Iraq could poison their prospects in next year's elections.

On Tuesday a delegation of 11 centrist Republican members of congress met Mr Bush and the Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the political strategist Karl Rove, at the White House to warn that their patience on Iraq was nearly exhausted.

"The American people are war-fatigued," Ray LaHood, a Republican congressman from Illinois who was at the meeting, told CNN yesterday.

"The American people want to know that there's a way out. The American people want to know that we're having success - either the government, or our men and women who are doing the hard work."

A number of the members were from swing districts where their margins of support have been severely eroded by the war.

The Republicans oppose the Democratic strategy of trying to use spending measures to force a withdrawal from Iraq.

But with no obvious signs of progress in Iraq, there is a move to make September the decision time. Gen Petraeus has said he will report then.

Yesterday even the minority house whip, Roy Blunt, a conservative congressman from Missouri, acknowledged that it would be difficult to maintain support for the war if the general could not show demonstrable progress by September.

Mr Bush's efforts to keep his party on side was not helped by the discovery that the Iraqi parliament plans to take July and August off.

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Wednesday to try to get the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to suspend the long break.

Yesterday Mr Cheney moved on to Tikrit where he told US forces that the troops increase and prolonged deployments were crucial to the outcome in Iraq.

But even Mr Cheney, a prime proponent of the war, was not upbeat yesterday. "We can expect more violence as they try to destroy the hopes of the Iraqi people," he told the troops. Suzanne Goldenberg @ Guardian