From the diplomatic battle with numerous countries opposed to the Iraq war, to the daring military plan that also faced many objections, Bush has played hard to achieve his objectives.

"Evidently there's some skepticism here in Europe about whether or not I mean what I say. Saddam Hussein clearly knows I mean what I say," Bush told a joint press conference Tuesday with his staunchest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Since the war started on March 20, Bush, who at 56 has never been in combat, made it a point to put the military in charge of the war, unlike former president Lyndon Johnson, who micromanaged the early part of the Vietnam War ing the 1960s.

While he was kept abreast of the military operations in Iraq, Bush kept a low public profile, only appearing at US military bases or meeting veterans and the families of US troops killed in Iraq.

Every weekend, Bush withdraws to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, outside the US capital.

But enticing the United States into a war the majority of the international community and a large part of the US public disapproved of, represented a major risk for Bush.

The last-minute defection of Turkey, which prevented US forces from opening a front in northern Iraq, and the failure to secure United Nations, did not discourage Bush.

Giving no ground to win over skeptics, Bush chose instead to reward all who were willing to support him in forming a coalition of some 50 countries, which paled by comparison to the coalition his father, former president George Bush, assembled to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.

With a reputation for demanding absolute loyalty from his aides, George W. Bush does not seem disposed to forgive those who opposed him.

He snubbed French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and his formerly warm relations with Mexican President Vicente Fox have cooled considerably. Instead, Blair can do no wrong.

When criticism was strongest against a US strategy that was encountering stiff resistance from the Iraqis a week into the war, Bush seemed to wince under the strain.

At a press conference with Blair in Camp David on March 27, Bush was curt and impatient.

With victory close at hand, the US president kept his reactions low keyed. When television cameras zeroed in on a statue of Saddam Hussein being torn down by a crowd of Iraqis in Baghdad with the help of a US armored tank recovery vehicle, Bush, according to his spokesman, merely said: "They got it down!"

He was also quick in calling for prudence, stressing that the war was not over.

But Bush, who in the 2000 election campaign said he did not want to be a nation builder, must still win the peace in Iraq, and is once again ready to risk another major crisis by limiting the UN's role in the reconstruction effort.

With less than 19 months left for the 2004 presidential elections, Bush has to face a more daunting task perhaps: convincing US voters that he is capable of righting the US economy and create more jobs.

SPACE.WIRE