The U.S. news media may soon face a dilemma: Can pundits keep calling George W. Bush "the popular war-time president" #8211 a favorite stock phrase #8211 if his poll numbers sink much further? For two years, the phrase has been a media cliché for Bush often delivered with a pleasing smile from an agreeable talking head. Or it’s used like a club against some critic who is out of step with the American people....

Much will depend on whether the national news media holds Bush accountable for his lengthening pattern of deceptions #8211 or whether the press corps continues to present Bush to the American people as "the popular war-time president" no matter what the polls may show.

Two years ago, as the bombs began to drop, George Bush promised Afghanistan 'the generosity of America and its allies'. Now, the familiar old warlords are regaining power, religious fundamentalism is renewing its grip and military skirmishes continue routinely. What was the purpose?

"I don't mind people trying to pick apart my policies, and that's fine and that's fair game," Bush said in the interview that will air Monday night. "But, you know, I don't think we're serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to become so uncivil that people say - use words that they shouldn't be using."

"I once believed that I served for a cause: 'To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States'. Now I no longer believe that," Tim Predmore, a member of the 101st Airborne Division serving near Mosul, wrote in a blistering opinion piece this week for his home newspaper, the Peoria Journal Star in Illinois. "I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies."

The dissenters - many of whom have risked deep disapproval from the military establishment to voice their opinions - have set up websites with names such as Bring Them Home Now. They have cried foul at administration plans to cut veterans' benefits and scale back combat pay for troops still in Iraq. They were furious at President Bush for reacting to military deaths in Iraq with the phrase "bring 'em on".