WASHINGTON: A barrage of criticism of the White House has turned into a numbers game, with Democrats taking issue over 16 misapplied words in a nationally-televised speech, 28 blanked-out pages from the 9/11 intelligence report, and a raft of other security related issues.

Opposition Democrats, who also find fault with escalating costs of the US-led occupation of Iraq, say the figures add up to one thing: a president once seemingly invincible now increasingly vulnerable on national security and the fight against terror — areas previously cited as his greatest strengths.

Over the past several weeks, Democrats who had been timid about challenging a popular president have hammered away at the White House over the now-discredited 16-word claim in the president’s “State of the Union” speech that Iraq sought uranium in Africa — an allegation that was widely discounted in US intelligence circles months before US President George W. Bush used it.

Mores salvos were directed at the White House on Tuesday, as Senate Democrats — and a few Republicans — grilled Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz about the escalating financial and human cost of the post-war occupation of Iraq.

“Our own people tell us we need another 5,000 European police officers on the ground now to help train their (Iraqi) police,” Senator Joseph Biden said in a television interview on Wednesday, reprising remarks he made one day earlier at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“We need another 30,000 forces from other countries to help alleviate the strain on our forces ... All we’re trying to do is get us to face up to that straight up now and make the changes necessary and win this peace,” the Delaware Democrat told CNN.

Lawmakers were stunned earlier this month when US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate panel that occupation operations in Iraq would cost some four billion dollars per month — twice the pre-war estimate.—AFP