• Bush prepares for renewed fight with Congress over Iraq

SYDNEY, Australia - President Bush wrapped up his participation at an Asia-Pacific summit Saturday and prepared for a renewed fight with the Democratic-run Congress over the future of the US involvement in Iraq.

He plans a nationally televised address this coming week to "lay out a vision" for the American people about the US role. In his Saturday radio address, Bush also set the stage for Monday's congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the chief US commander in Iraq.

In the radio talk, recorded before he headed back to the United States, Bush recounted his Labor Day trip to Iraq's Anbar Province to visit US troops and "see with my own eyes the remarkable changes they are making possible."

Sunni tribal leaders, working with Iraqi and US forces, helped drive out al-Qaida militants, Bush said. "The level of violence is down. Local governments are meeting again. Young Sunnis are joining the police and army. And normal life is returning," the president said.

"Success in Anbar is critical to the democratic future of Iraq and to the war on terror," he said.

But the Senate's top Democrat contended in his party's weekly radio address that the president had misled the country into "an ill-planned war in Iraq" before finishing the job of destroying al-Qaida.

The US military is not to blame for setbacks in the war, said Nevada Sen. Harry Reid. "These are President Bush's failures — and it is long past time for him to change his flawed policies," he said.

"the level of violence is down"...???