White House News

WASHINGTON - President Bush and Iraq's prime minister have agreed to set a "general time horizon" for bringing more U.S. troops home from the war, a dramatic shift from the administration's once-ironclad unwillingness to talk about any kind of deadline or timetable.

MEXICO CITY - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday that U.S. intelligence led Mexican forces to a small submarine captured this week packed with 5.8 tons of cocaine.

HOUSTON - President Bush, in the second half of a Southwestern fundraising trip Friday, backed the candidacy of Republican Pete Olson, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Nick Lampson in Texas' 22nd congressional district.

WASHINGTON - President Bush has been a "total failure" in everything from the economy to the war to energy policy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. In an interview on CNN, the California Democrat was asked to respond to video of the president criticizing the Democratic-led Congress for heading into the final 26 days of the legislative session without having passed a single government spending bill.

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sought to reassure an anxious public Sunday that the banking system is sound, while also bracing people for more troubled times ahead.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's top military officer said Sunday a specific time frame for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq could jeopardize political and economic progress, leading to "dangerous consequences."

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. - Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr. has four stars on his collars and 60 combat missions under his belt. But on a recent trip to a California airfield, he sprang from an SUV like a happy kid and charged toward a crowd of servicemen and women.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that the United States still has conditions for negotiating with Iran even though the Bush administration is sending a senior diplomat to weekend talks with an Iranian nuclear envoy.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is telling a federal appeals court that it has the authority to detain a Canadian who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15 and is accused of killing a U.S. soldier.

REDDING, Calif. - President Bush offered federal help and encouragement Thursday to some of the 25,000 firefighters working under a blazing sun to contain wildfires that make up the single largest fire event ever recorded in California.

HONOLULU - The Army says it's critical to saving the lives of wounded soldiers. Animal-rights activists call the training cruel and outdated.

WASHINGTON - President Bush led a poignant tribute on Thursday to his friend and former spokesman, Tony Snow, who lost his public fight with cancer but never surrendered the spirit that defined his life.

WASHINGTON - It's OK to eat all kinds of tomatoes again, the U.S. government declared Thursday — lifting its salmonella warning on the summer favorites amid signs that the record outbreak, while not over, may finally be slowing.

WASHINGTON - President Bush invoked executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration's leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003.

WASHINGTON - European terrorists are trying to enter the United States with European Union passports, and there is no guarantee officials will catch them every time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.

WASHINGTON - This year is the 100th anniversary of baseball's unofficial anthem, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," but if you're President Bush, it's just as easy to bring the game to the White House.

NEW YORK - Inferior electrical work by private contractors on U.S. military bases in Iraq is more widespread than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to a published report.

WASHINGTON - A soured public has given President Bush and Congress record low approval ratings in the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll, underscoring the toll taken by fretful economic woes and long-lasting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON - Former Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday disavowed the now-defunct legal reasoning used to justify harshly questioning terrorism suspects, but dug in his heels to defend White House officials who pressured him while he was hospitalized four years ago to approve terror surveillance programs.

WASHINGTON - This is hardly the way he wanted to go out.

WASHINGTON - The Defense Department will send close to 800 more bomb-resistant vehicles to Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban has military leaders developing plans to add thousands of U.S. troop reinforcements.

The Associated Press-Ipsos poll on President Bush and Congress was conducted July 10-14, 2008 and is based on telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,000 adults from all states. The sample included 466 people who identified themselves as Democrats or who lean toward the Democratic Party, and 399 people who identified themselves as Republican or who lean toward the Republican Party.

WASHINGTON - The second-in-command at the government's top whistle-blower office has quit in a dispute with his boss, whom he accused of putting "political agendas and personal vendettas" ahead of the agency's mission and independence.

WASHINGTON - The IRS Criminal Investigation Division completed more than 4,200 investigations in the 2007 budget year, with about one half resulting in conviction for a crime, according to a report issued Thursday.

WASHINGTON - Federal officials are investigating whether millions of dollars are being steered improperly toward a government contractor to run the country's largest counterterrorism exercise.

COMBAT OUTPOST COPPER, Iraq - It's quiet around here in farm country, south of Baghdad where al-Qaida once held sway. Just months ago U.S. foot patrols through the wheat fields nearby would regularly draw fire — if the soldiers managed first to elude al-Qaida-planted roadside bombs.

WASHINGTON - A federal judge is considering whether to block the first Guantanamo Bay war crimes trial from beginning next week. If he does, it could throw another kink into the Bush administration's legal strategy in the war on terrorism.

WASHINGTON - Pentagon leaders on Wednesday signaled a surge in U.S. forces in Afghanistan "sooner rather than later," a shift that could send some units there within weeks, as officials prepare to cut troop levels in Iraq.

WASHINGTON - For now, the Bush administration has chosen compromise over confrontation in dealing with Iran's disputed nuclear program with a dramatic gesture intended to demonstrate commitment to a negotiated solution.