WASHINGTON: Two bombs set off in the Middle East reverberated through political America this week, causing collateral damage to the political plans of President George W. Bush.

One bomb destroyed part of the UN regional headquarters building in Baghdad, killing the top UN official in the country, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and at least 21 others.

The other bomb went off in a bus in East Al Quds, killing 20 people, including Ultra-Orthodox Israelis and visiting Americans. Israel answered by assassinating one of the more pragmatic leaders of Hamas, Ismail Abu Shanab, threatening any future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The Middle East explosions occurred when the president was either vacationing at his Texas ranch or making side trips to the state of Washington and Idaho.

He mostly stayed away from mentioning Iraq, where the American military has been losing soldiers at the rate of nearly one per day.

In Seattle, Bush faced questions on Iraq for the first time since the bombing. He said he believed there was “a foreign element” of “Al Qaeda-type fighters” moving into Iraq that wants to fight the United States there because “they can’t stand the thought of a free society in the Middle East.”

Newspapers (such as the Washington Post and The New York Times) reminded readers that it was less than one month ago that Bush told a White House Rose Garden news conference that conditions in Iraq “are growing more peaceful”, and there was “pretty good progress” on the road map for Middle East peace and a Palestinian state by 2005.

Readers were also reminded that before the American and British invasion of Iraq, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, in Congressional testimony, scoffed at a military officials’ estimate that several hundred thousand American troops would be required to maintain security in Iraq after the combat was over.

“Wildly off the mark,” said Wolfowitz, but even friendly commentators (such as conservative George Will) said that the current 139,000 American troops did not seem to be enough.

Senator Joseph Biden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Bush’s plan for a more peaceful world “has clearly not occurred” and that “the world is more apprehensive about our leadership.”

Nevertheless, top US officials are pushing ahead. Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to drum up support for a new UN resolution on Iraq, which could lead to a UN peacekeeping force in Iraq.

But given the bitterness that lingers after the February Security Council debate over Iraq, and the post-debate criticism that the Bush administration levelled at those (such as France and Germany) who failed to support the US action, it will not be a simple job to line up international volunteers for an Iraqi force.

According to (Washington Post-ABC) polls, voter support for the Bush military campaign has dropped in the last six months from around 80 per cent to 58 per cent.

But it takes time for events such as the Middle East bombings to register with the voters. The usual process involves members of Congress and potential presidential contenders weighing in with criticism.

That has not yet happened, but looking back at the American military disasters in Lebanon in 1983, where 241 Marines died in the bombing of their barracks, and in Somalia in 1993, where 18 soldiers died and more than 70 were badly wounded, that is the usual course of events.

It does not help the Bush administration that the economy is not turning out to be the bright spot that the president hoped would take attention away from any foreign policy shortcomings. The American unemployment rate holds steady with thousands of jobs being exported to lower paying countries such as China and India, and the budget deficit continues to grow despite or because of the administration’s programme of tax cuts.—dpa