WASHINGTON -- Forty-nine retired generals and admirals yesterday urged President Bush to suspend plans for a national missile shield and instead use the money to secure nuclear materials abroad and ports and borders at home.

The Bush administration plans to field a nationwide defense system in September to shoot down missiles armed with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, and has budgeted $3.7 billion this year for the project. . . .

But the 49 former senior military leaders contend that the system remains unproven. They also said it is more likely that terrorists would smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States than a country would launch a missile at the United States, risking a devastating retaliatory strike.

"As you have said, Mr. President, our highest priority is to prevent terrorists from acquiring and employing weapons of mass destruction," wrote the former officers, including retired Admiral William J. Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired General Joseph P. Hoar, former chief of the US Central Command.

The retired officers added that "the militarily responsible course of action" is to use the funding for the missile shield "to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States."

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, recently concluded that only two of the antimissile system's 10 key technologies have been fully tested. Meanwhile, to make the September deadline, the Pentagon has waived some operational testing requirements. The military's top weapons tester stated earlier this month that such testing is not planned "for the foreseeable future."

The letter calls on the president to "postpone operational deployment of the expensive and untested" system.

Former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke Sunday called on the White House to make public his own testimony to Congress as well as other statements, e-mails and documents about how the Bush administration handled the threat of terror.

Clarke, center of a firestorm over the level of engagement of President Bush in the issue before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was responding to Republican allegations that his earlier testimony to Congress contradicted statements he made last week that criticized Bush.

"I would welcome it being declassified, but not just a little line here or there. Let's declassify all six hours of my testimony," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, slamming Clarke on Friday, called for declassifying Clarke's July 2002 testimony to a joint hearing by the Senate and House of Representatives Intelligence committees.

Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said Clarke's words then, when, as a member of Bush administration he defended its policies, conflicted with last week's sworn public testimony before the bipartisan commission investigating the attacks, known popularly as the 9/11 Commission.

Clarke said he supported having that testimony declassified and also wanted testimony given in private to the commission by Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice made public.

He said he wanted everything out in the open. "The White House is selectively now finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed were covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press.

"Let's take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20th to September 11th, and let's declassify all of it," he said.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, at the center of a controversy over her refusal to testify before the Sept. 11 commission, yesterday renewed her determination not to give public testimony and said she could not list anything she wished she had done differently in the months before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Administration officials were searching for a compromise last night with the commission that would limit the political damage from her refusal to testify. But a defiant Rice gave no hint of that as she defended the Bush administration's counterterrorism performance on CBS's "60 Minutes" -- the same venue used a week earlier by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke to launch his criticism that the Bush administration did too little on terrorism before Sept. 11, 2001, and wound up strengthening al Qaeda by pursuing war in Iraq. . . .

Rice gave no ground on the administration's decision that she will not appear in public before the panel or testify under oath because Bush officials believe doing so would compromise the constitutional powers of the executive branch. The renewed refusal came despite the panel's unanimous plea for her testimony.

Republican commissioner John F. Lehman, who has written extensively on separation-of-power issues, said that "the White House is making a huge mistake" by blocking Rice's testimony and decried it as "a legalistic approach."

"The White House is being run by a kind of strict construction of interpretation of the powers of the president," he said on ABC's "This Week." "There are plenty of precedents that the White House could use if they wanted to do this."

Two Republican officials, who declined to be identified because they are not supposed to talk to reporters, said White House aides are discussing ways they could compromise with the commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, perhaps by agreeing to the declassification of Rice's private testimony. "That would show people that she is cooperating, and make it clear that her testimony is consistent with her public pronouncements," one official said. "That would help our credibility."

Rice said she has "absolutely nothing to hide" and "would really like" to testify but will not because of the constitutional principle. . . .

Rice said that when Bush met with his top advisers on Sept. 15, 2001, "not a single one of the president's principal advisers suggested that he do anything more than go after Afghanistan, and that's what we did." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was at that meeting and did suggest that Iraq should be attacked, as described in detail in Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War."

Rice said the Bush administration's development of a counterterrorism plan before Sept. 11 was brisk.

The Bush administration has been sharply critical of Clinton and his antiterrorism policy for depending on diplomacy and law enforcement and not having military intervention as part of his plan to attack al Qaeda.

But Rice said yesterday that the United States is safer today because "we have an umbrella of intelligence and law enforcement worldwide."

Rice argued that "al Qaeda is not more dangerous today than it was on September 11" but said it is still dangerous. She also said, "The world is a lot safer and the war on terrorism is well-served by the victory in Iraq." When it was noted that there have been more terrorist attacks in the 30 months since Sept. 11 than in the 30 months prior, she replied: "That's the wrong way to look at it."

The United States wants to transfer power in Iraq to a hand-picked prime minister, abandoning plans for an expansion of the current 25-member governing council, coalition officials in Baghdad say.

With less than 100 days before the US occupation authorities are to transfer sovereignty on June 30, fears of wrangling among Iraqi politicians has forced Washington to make its third switch of strategy in six months.

The search is now on for an Iraqi to serve as chief executive. He will almost certainly be from the Shia Muslim majority, and probably a secular technocrat. It is not clear if Iraqi agreement on this issue has been sought.

Initial plans for enlarging the existing 25-member governing council, which has the task of appointing the cabinet, have been downgraded in favour of letting the present members get on with their job. Although the council may still be increased, the process need not be tied to the June 30 deadline.

Plans to create a three-man presidency - with a representative of the Shia, the Sunni and the Kurds - are still under way, but its powers would be mainly symbolic. The interim government will serve until direct elections for a national assembly are held at the end of the year.

A decision about how to pick an Iraqi government to take over when the Americans cede power have been in turmoil for several months. An initial US proposal to hold unelected caucuses of regional "notables" to choose a council which would then nominate a cabinet, collapsed in disarray after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shia cleric, called for direct elections.

The latest plan is to choose a government after a vague process of "extensive deliberation and consultations with cross-sections of the Iraqi people".

Ayatollah Sistani said last week that he would not meet any United Nations officials if the world body endorsed the transitional law. One of his aides said on Saturday that the cleric might issue a religious edict against any Iraqis who join the interim government.

WASHINGTON, March 29 ? The chairman and vice chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Monday that they would ask Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath in any future questioning because of discrepancies between her statements and those made in sworn testimony by President Bush's former counterterrorism chief.

"I would like to have her testimony under the penalty of perjury," said the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, in comments that reflected the panel's exasperation with the White House and Ms. Rice, the president's national security adviser.

Ms. Rice has granted one private interview to the 10-member, bipartisan commission and has requested another. But the White House has cited executive privilege in refusing to allow her to testify before the commission in public or under oath, even as she has granted numerous interviews about its investigation.

The White House declined to respond to Mr. Kean's comments. One official who had been briefed on discussions between the White House and the commission said Monday night that several options were under consideration that might lead to a compromise over Ms. Rice. The official, who asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the negotiations, declined to specify the options and said nothing had yet been decided.

In separate interviews, Mr. Kean and the panel's vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, said they would continue to press for Ms. Rice to testify under oath in public.

But they said that if the White House continued to refuse to have her answer questions at a public hearing, any new private interviews with Ms. Rice should be conducted under new ground rules, with the national security adviser placed under oath and a transcription made.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton also said that if the White House agreed, they were ready to declassify and make public the notes taken by commissioners when they interviewed Ms. Rice on Feb. 7, along with the transcripts of nearly 15 hours of private questioning of Mr. Clarke that was conducted by the commission before last week's hearing. "My tendency is to say that everything should be made public," Mr. Kean said.

Throughout the day on Monday, there were signs of a debate within the administration over whether to hold fast to the principle of not allowing White House aides to testify before Congress or to seek a deal that would allow Ms. Rice to appear before the commission. . . .

Ms. Rice has given a flurry of interviews to news organizations over the last week in which she has challenged Mr. Clarke's truthfulness, including his depiction of her as slow-footed in responding to intelligence warnings throughout 2001 that Al Qaeda was plotting a catastrophic attack on the United States.

Members of the commission, Democrats and Republicans alike, say they are angered by her interviews. They say the White House has made a major political blunder by continuing to assert executive privilege in blocking public testimony by Ms. Rice while continuing to use her as the principal public spokeswoman in defending the Bush's administration's actions before Sept. 11.

"I find it reprehensible that the White House is making her the fall guy for this legalistic position," said John F. Lehman, Navy secretary in the Reagan administration and a Republican member of the commission. "I've published two books on executive privilege, and I know that executive privilege has to bend to reality."

While there is precedent for the White House argument that incumbent national security advisers and other White House advisers should not be required to testify in public, constitutional scholars say that the position is based only on past practice, not law, and that presidents have repeatedly waived the privilege, especially at times of scandal or other intense political pressure.

President George Bush surrendered yesterday to public demands for greater disclosure from the White House to the investigation into the September 11 attacks, authorising his national security adviser to testify in public before the commission.

The retreat - after weeks of resisting a public appearance by Condoleezza Rice - was one of two positive gestures to the commission yesterday from a White House acutely aware that the controversy was damaging Mr Bush's re-election prospects.

In addition to allowing Ms Rice to testify in public and under oath as investigators demand, Mr Bush and the vice-president, Dick Cheney, also agreed to meet the commission, but in a single private session.

The two men will not be under oath, but their appearance represents an advance on an earlier deal that would have had Mr Bush meeting only the commission chairman and vice-chairman.

In brief comments to reporters yesterday, Mr Bush claimed he waived the principle of executive privilege because of the gravity of the attacks. "I've ordered this level of cooperation because I consider it necessary to gaining a complete picture of the months and years that preceded the murder of our fellow citizens on September 11 2001," he said.

However, the concessions came with firm conditions making it evident that the White House - which opposed the establishment of the commission - does not intend to be forced into further compromises.

A letter from Mr Bush's counsel, Alberto Gonzales, said the White House would not entertain additional demands for testimony from Ms Rice, or other White House officials. There is also no scope for expanding the session with Mr Bush and Mr Cheney.

A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".

She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."

She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used ? but not specifically about how they would be used ? and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities ? with skyscrapers."

The accusations from Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who speaks Azerbaijani, Farsi, Turkish and English, will reignite the controversy over whether the administration ignored warnings about al-Qa'ida. That controversy was sparked most recently by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official, who has accused the administration of ignoring his warnings. . . .

Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.

She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission ? 90 per cent of it ? related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well." . . .

It is impossible at this stage to verify Mrs Edmonds' claims. However, some senior US senators testified to her credibility in 2002 when she went public with separate allegations relating to alleged incompetence and corruption within the FBI's translation department.

There is nobody in America who in the early 1990s worried more about the impact of trade on the wages of Americans in industries that came under pressure from foreign competition than H. Ross Perot. In his political career as advocate of deficit reduction and foe of NAFTA, there was nobody who clearly and visibly cared more about the long-run economic destiny of average Americans than H. Ross Perot. Yet on February 7, 2004, the Times of India reported that Perot Systems is going to double its employment in Asia from 3,500 to 7,000--which will then be half of Perot Systems' worldwide employment. Remember how H. Ross Perot used to talk about the "giant sucking sound" of U.S. jobs going to Mexico? It's not giant, but it is a sucking sound as people working for Perot Systems process medical bills and design software for other outsourcing operations in India. If the economic logic of "outsourcing" is the overwhelmingly powerful consideration for H. Ross Perot, for what American businesses will it not prove irresistible?

WASHINGTON, April 4 ? The federal government has eased a ban on editing manuscripts from nations that are under United States trade embargoes, a move that appears to leave publishers free once again to edit scholarly works from Iran and other such countries.

The Treasury Department sent a letter on Friday to a lawyer for the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, an international group representing more than 360,000 engineers and scientists, saying the organization's peer review, editing and publishing was "not constrained" by regulations from the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. The group says its members produce 30 percent of the world's literature in electrical and electronics engineering and computer science.

The letter from the Treasury Department referred specifically to publishing by the institute, but Arthur Winston, the group's president, said he believed the ruling would be "a relief for nearly everyone" in the scholarly publishing community.

"The ruling eliminates potentially disturbing U.S. government intrusions on our scholarly publishing process," Mr. Winston said.

No one at the Treasury Department could be reached for comment Sunday night on the ruling.

The department and publishers have long quarreled over the exemption of "information or informational materials" from the nation's trade embargoes. Congress has generally allowed such exemptions.

Nonetheless, the Treasury Department sent out advisory letters over the past year telling publishers who were editing material from a country under a trade embargo that they were forbidden to reorder paragraphs or sentences, correct syntax or grammar, replace "inappropriate words" or add illustrations.

The advisories concerned Iran, but experts said the ruling seemed to extend to Cuba, Libya, North Korea and other nations with which most trade is banned without a government license.

In theory, even routine editing on manuscripts from those countries could have subjected publishers to fines of $500,000 and 10 years in jail.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 4 ? A coordinated Shiite militia uprising against the American-led occupation rippled across Iraq on Sunday, reaching into Baghdad and the sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City on the capital's outskirts and roiling the holy city of Najaf and at least two other cities in southern Iraq.

Seven American soldiers were killed in Sadr City, one of the worst single losses for the American forces in any firefight since Baghdad was captured a year ago.

An Iraqi health official in Najaf said 24 people had been killed and about 200 wounded in clashes that ensued when armed militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, a 31-year-old firebrand Shiite cleric, besieged a garrison commanded by Spanish troops on the road leading into Najaf from neighboring Kufa.

An American military spokesman said one Salvadoran soldier had been killed in Kufa and 13 soldiers wounded, including an American. All the other casualties were said to be Iraqis.

Within hours of a call by Mr. Sadr to his followers to "terrorize your enemy," his militiamen, said to number tens of thousands across Iraq, emerged into the streets of Baghdad, Najaf, Kufa and Amara, a city 250 miles south of Baghdad where four Iraqis were reported killed in clashes with British troops.

Forbidden to bear arms under a decree issued last year by the American occupation authority, the Sadr militiamen bristled with a wide array of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades that were fired at American tanks in Sadr City.

Taking advantage of an American policy that has largely kept American and other occupation troops out of volatile Shiite population centers like Sadr City, Najaf and Kufa, the militiamen succeeded in taking control of checkpoints and police stations in all three cities that had been staffed by the new Iraqi-trained police and civil defense force.

Residents in the three centers said the Iraqis had abandoned their posts almost as soon as the militiamen appeared with their weapons, leaving the militiamen in unchallenged control ? and punching a huge hole in American hopes that American-trained Iraqis can be relied on increasingly to take over from American troops in providing security in Iraq's major cities.

The insurrection, which spread across the Shiite heartland in a matter of hours, came five days after the ambush in the predominantly Sunni Muslim city of Falluja, outside Baghdad, in which a mob mutilated the bodies of four American security guards and hanged two of them from a bridge. Together, the events in Falluja and the other cities on Sunday appeared likely to shake the American hold on Iraq more than anything since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's government last April 9.

In effect, the militia attacks confronted the American military command with what has been its worst nightmare as it has struggled to pacify Iraq: the spread of an insurgency that has stretched a force of 130,000 American troops from the minority Sunni population to the majority Shiites, who are believed to account for about 60 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million.

An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government's headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident.

Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said.

The role of Blackwater's commandos in Sunday's fighting in Najaf illuminates the gray zone between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating in an active war zone. Thousands of armed private security contractors are operating in Iraq in a wide variety of missions and exchanging fire with Iraqis every day, according to informal after-action reports from several companies.

In Sunday's fighting, Shiite militia forces barraged the Blackwater commandos, four MPs and a Marine gunner with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 fire for hours before U.S. Special Forces troops arrived. A sniper on a nearby roof apparently wounded three men. U.S. troops faced heavy fighting in several Iraqi cities that day.

The Blackwater commandos, most of whom are former Special Forces troops, are on contract to provide security for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Najaf. . . .

A Defense Department spokesman said that there were no military reports about the opening hours of the siege on CPA headquarters in Najaf because there were no military personnel on the scene. The Defense Department often does not have a clear handle on the daily actions of security contractors because the contractors work directly for the coalition authority, which coordinates and communicates on a limited basis through the normal military chain of command.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- Iraq is worse off now, after the U.S.-led invasion, than it was under Saddam Hussein, Hans Blix told a Danish newspaper today.

"What's positive is that Saddam and his bloody regime is gone, but when figuring out the score, the negatives weigh more," the former chief UN weapons inspector was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper Jyllands Posten.

"That accounts for the many casualties during the war and the many people who still die because of the terrorism the war has nourished," he said. "The war has liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, but the costs have been too great."

The US military admitted today that it had lost control of two cities to Shia militants as fierce fighting continued to rage across Iraq.

Despite attempts by Washington to play down the scale of the uprisings that have swept the country, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez said today that coalition troops in Najaf and Kut had been fought back by militants loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

He said coalition soldiers - Ukrainians in Kut and Spaniards in Najaf - had retreated to their bases on the outskirts of the cities, effectively ceding control to the Shia fighters.

He vowed to retake Kut "imminently", while conceding that the presence of large numbers of pilgrims in the holy city of Najaf for a religious festival could hamper any coalition counter-offensive. The coalition denied reports that some of its soldiers had been taken hostage by Shia militants in Najaf yesterday.

In a further setback to the coalition on what has been the bloodiest week since the end of the war on year ago, Al-Jazeera television broadcast footage of three Japanese, including one woman, dressed in civilian clothes it said were taken hostage by an Iraqi group.

The hitherto unknown group - Saraya al-Mujahideen - threatened to kill the captives unless Japan withdrew its troops from Iraq within three days.

Meanwhile, US forces sustained further casualties in fierce hand-to-hand battles with militants on the streets of Falluja, where local doctors said the Iraqi death toll had reached almost 300 in the last three days.

The US assault on Falluja began early on Monday, when marines surrounded the city of more than 200,000 people. Since then, US forces have been waging heavy street battles, using warplanes and tanks against Sunni insurgents in heavily populated districts who have dug themselves in.

Taher al-Issawi, a doctor in the besieged city's hospital, said today that more than 280 Iraqis have been killed and 400 wounded during the offensive. He told the Associated Press there were many more dead and wounded "in various places buried under rubble" who could not be reached because of fighting.

According to a report on Al-Jazeera news, at least 45 Iraqis were killed yesterday - including a family sitting in a car parked behind the Abd al-Aziz al-Samarai mosque compound when it was bombed by a US plane.

A spokesman for Iraq Body Count criticised the US tactics for putting the lives of civilians in at risk.

"The recent upsurge in violence has emphasised yet again that it is innocent Iraqi civilians who are the main victims of the US-led war and occupation. Up to 11,000 civilians are now reported killed since the invasion. Although we regret the loss of military lives too, military people have chosen to put their lives at risk. Civilians have no choice," he said.

"The US has responded to the deaths of four security contractors in Falluja with the killing of 16 children. This is not the 'winning of hearts and minds' but the destruction of human life and hope. The continuing failure of the USA and the UK to acknowledge the costs of their policies in civilian deaths further undermines the prospects for peace and reconciliation in Iraq."

Despite the air strike and a six-hour gun battle yesterday, insurgents still appeared to be using the area around the mosque as a base today and a fresh assault was under way to uproot them. . . .

In other developments, Iraqi interior minister Nouri Badran, who is responsible for Iraq's hard-pressed security forces, announced his resignation today.

Mr Badran's decision did not appear to be directly related to the turmoil sweeping the country. According to the Associated Press, he stepped down at the request of Iraq's US administrator Paul Bremer to maintain the Shia-Sunni balance in the government.

Mr Badran, a Shia Muslim, said he had been told that the US-led administration believed the defence minister and interior minister should not both be Shia. A new defence minister's position was created this month and filled by a Shia official.

However, critics will point to the fact that Mr Badran may have been forced to leave because the Iraqi police forces he controls have proved wholly ineffective in the face of sustained attacks by insurgents.

WASHINGTON, April 7 ? United States forces are confronting a broad-based Shiite uprising that goes well beyond supporters of one militant Islamic cleric who has been the focus of American counterinsurgency efforts, United States intelligence officials said Wednesday.

That assertion contradicts repeated statements by the Bush administration and American officials in Iraq. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they did not believe the United States was facing a broad-based Shiite insurgency. Administration officials have portrayed Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric who is wanted by American forces, as the catalyst of the rising violence within the Shiite community of Iraq.

But intelligence officials now say that there is evidence that the insurgency goes beyond Mr. Sadr and his militia, and that a much larger number of Shiites have turned against the American-led occupation of Iraq, even if they are not all actively aiding the uprising.

A year ago, many Shiites rejoiced at the American invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who had brutally repressed the Shiites for decades. But American intelligence officials now believe that hatred of the American occupation has spread rapidly among Shiites, and is now so large that Mr. Sadr and his forces represent just one element..

Meanwhile, American intelligence has not yet detected signs of coordination between the Sunni rebellion in Iraq's heartland and the Shiite insurgency. But United States intelligence says that the Sunni rebellion also goes far beyond former Baathist government members. Sunni tribal leaders, particularly in Al Anbar Province, home to Ramadi, the provincial capital, and Falluja, have turned against the United States and are helping to lead the Sunni rebellion, intelligence officials say.

The result is that the United States is facing two broad-based insurgencies that are now on parallel tracks.

The 9/11 Commission is a historical inquiry. Yet so much has happened since that dreadful day in 2001 that the commission?s findings are likely to be mere footnotes in future history books, even if they come to any definitive conclusion at all about whether 9/11 was preventable?and that?s an unlikely prospect, frankly. Iraq, on the other hand, will take up whole shelves of libraries in decades ahead. And the pages of that history are being written now, moment by moment.

This was always Richard Clarke?s main point as well. Rice?s former counterterrorism deputy, whose incendiary accusations have framed the entire commission inquiry, made clear that the reason he quit the administration in disgust and turned his back on his former bosses was the decision to attack Iraq. ?Many thought that the Bush administration was doing a good job of fighting terrorism when, actually, the administration had squandered the opportunity to eliminate Al Qaeda and instead strengthened our enemies by going off on a completely unnecessary tangent, the invasion of Iraq,? Clarke writes on the first page of his new book, ?Against All Enemies.?

This week?s headlines in Iraq, coming on top of a year of revelations, seemed to vindicate him. The overwhelming evidence that Iraq was not anything close to an imminent threat, on WMD or anything else; that whatever emerges from that nation now is not going to be a quick fix for America's strategic position; that in fact the terror threat was largely stateless, not state-sponsored; that America did not have the resources or ability to destroy Al Qaeda and transform Iraq at the same time?all this suggests that Clarke's central critique, the one still being shunted aside as we all buzz about Condi's big day, is probably on target.

For too long, official Washington, not to mention the nation?s leading pundits, have been missing the real elephant in the 9/11 hearing room: whether the Bush administration has completely misconceived the war on terror. Even John Kerry, Bush?s rival in November, seems reluctant to come out and say this as forthrightly as Clarke has. Indeed, the public may be getting there ahead of the pundits. The president finds his once-soaring ratings as a ?war president? falling into a growing credibility gap as every day brings fresh evidence that this critique is true.

Something clearly has gone very wrong. Al Qaeda knocked down those buildings on 9/11. And Al Qaeda was, at that time, a unique phenomenon, the only terrorist group of global reach that had declared war on America globally. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda ?franchises? like Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia were all local or regional. America, this critique goes, had only one task after 9/11: to destroy Al Qaeda utterly, to cauterize it from the planet and replace its influence and that of its chief political ally, the Taliban, with something more civilized in the region they called home, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That would have really sent a message of American power. Yet we allowed our attention, money and military and intelligence resources to be diverted; worse, we permitted the ?war? on terror to grow into a strategic monstrosity, a lashing-out in all directions with no end to it in sight. We permitted Al Qaeda?and the Taliban?to linger on in the world far past what should have been their meager shelf live, thus inspiring other groups to follow in Osama bin Laden?s footsteps.