WASHINGTON ‹ President Bush's ''mission accomplished'' is looking more like mission impossible.
Aboard an aircraft carrier one year ago, the commander in chief declared that major combat in Iraq had ended. Today, Bush and his advisers are struggling with a tangled occupation that is anything but free of combat.
None of the next-step options shows much hope of working, nor is there a clear strategy to end the U.S. occupation.
''We will not cut and run,'' Bush promises.
A plan to get tougher and use more firepower against insurgents risks more civilian casualties, could stir more uprisings and fan hatred of Americans throughout the Arab world. Bringing in additional U.S. troops could further strain the already hard-pressed volunteer military and reserve units and bring more hardships to military families.
Pulling back from confrontation could signal weakness. A quick withdrawal of U.S. troops could plunge the country into civil war.
With Bush campaigning for re-election on the strength of his record as a wartime president, chances seem to be fading fast for a stable Iraq before the November election, despite plans for a June 30 transfer of sovereignty to a new interim government in Baghdad.
Images of fierce fighting in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq showed the resistance was not weakening. Some coalition countries are leaving; others are pulling back resources. Violence is escalating against both U.S. troops and civilians.
Faced with this deteriorating situation, Bush recently shifted course and agreed to give the United Nations a larger role in bringing self-rule to Iraq.
That should help ''take the face off the American occupation of Iraq,'' said the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.
It also has contributed to new tensions.
The U.N. envoy entrusted by the administration to bring order out of chaos is critical of the United States for firing on a Fallujah mosque. Lakhdar Brahimi also denounced Bush's support for Israeli's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, as an obstacle to his efforts to negotiate among Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and other Iraqi groups.
Brahimi has proposed that the caretaker government ‹ which will serve until a successor is elected next year ‹ be chosen at the end of May, rather than a month later, in order to give it time to define its authority.
Bhahimi wants those holding top posts barred from being candidates in national elections next year. That would appear to eliminate several Iraqis now in the U.S.-picked Governing Council from serving in the interim government, including Ahmad Chalabi, a Pentagon ally.
Chalabi has denounced Brahimi's plan ‹ which Bush has praised ‹ as unworkable and unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., an author of the 1998 law that made ''regime change'' in Iraq a U.S. policy goal, suggested the Iraqi leaders be allowed to ''bring back a lot more of the people that were in the government of Saddam Hussein.''
''I know that's a tough thing to do,'' he said. ''You have to be a shrewd judge of people and hearts.'' But he noted that such a process seemed to work well in helping some former Soviet bloc countries transform from communism to democracy.
Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, has taken steps to offer jobs to some former members of Saddam's Baathist Party. He also has implied that it was probably a mistake to disband the Iraqi army.
Yet little that Bremer or the U.S.-picked council has done so far has helped to boost confidence or promote acceptance among Iraqis of their occupiers. The United States also is struggling with how much power to give the interim government. It does not want to relinquish military decisions, for instance.
Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman told a Senate hearing last week that the new government would have ''limited'' sovereignty.
Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution who generally supported the war, said such comments ''send the wrong message'' to Iraqis.
''Instead, what you want to do is emphasize all the things you are transferring and point out that, to the extent that this new government won't have every single power, it is because you want to reserve some of the big decisions for the first elected Iraqi government,'' he said.
Recent polls show public doubts are growing about Iraq and Bush's handling of the war. Yet this has not transferred into support for John Kerry, his Democratic rival.
A lot depends on what happens on the ground in Iraq between now and Election Day.
''A picture is worth 10,000 words. And if the pictures continue to be this ugly in October, the president will have a problem,'' said GOP pollster Frank Luntz.
By the same token, if Iraq is stable by then and the violence has ebbed, Iraq will fade as an issue.
''Victory is a great deodorant,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center in Washington.
Tom Raum has covered Washington for The Associated Press since 1973, including five presidencies.
