WASHINGTON, Aug 26 (AFP) - Amid wilting election-year support for the military campaign in Iraq, US President George W. Bush is distancing himself from the go-it-alone "war president" image he once embraced with relish.
Gone is the commander-in-chief who landed a jet on a moving aircraft carrier to give a speech calling Iraq "one victory" in the war on terrorism in front of a red, white and blue banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished."
"Nobody wants to be the 'war president,'" Bush, who had proudly claimed that label for himself, told supporters at a July 20 rally in Iowa. "I want to be the 'peace president.'"
In February, before polls reflected a steep slide in US public backing for the war in Iraq, Bush had declared: "I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind."
But the leader who once demanded Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" and told Iraqi insurgents mulling attacks on US troops to "bring them on" now barely ever mentions the elusive terrorist mastermind and has been thrown on the defensive where it comes to the March 2003 invasion.
Surveys show a majority of Americans think the war, which has cost billions of dollars and the lives of nearly 1,000 soldiers, was a mistake. The weapons of mass destruction central to Bush's case for war have not been found.
Part of the president's defense has been to imply that the United Nations Security Council -- which he warned would become "irrelevant" to world affairs if it refused to back the war -- saw eye-to-eye with him.
"I said, I believe there's a threat. They looked at the same intelligence, they remembered the same history, and came to the same conclusion," he said recently. "They passed a resolution, 15 to nothing, that said that Saddam Hussein disclose, disarm or face 'serious consequences.'"
But the UN Security Council also failed to approve a second resolution Bush sought that would have explicitly given UN backing to the use of military force, angering the White House.
Bush, who ruffled feathers in 2002 by lumping Iraq, Iran and North Korea together in an "axis of evil," now trumpets multilateral diplomatic approaches to convincing Tehran and Pyongyang to give up their nuclear programs.
He also points to "nearly 40 nations involved in Afghanistan, some 30 nations involved in Iraq" to rebut charges of unilateral US action, and pays homage in his stump speech to diplomatic efforts to disarm Libya.
National security is second to no other issue ahead of the November 2 elections, the first presidential contest since the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes.
Bush is running neck and neck with his Democratic rival for the White House, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who has accused the incumbent of squandering the global goodwill that the attacks engendered and alienated traditional allies who opposed the war in Iraq.
"This debate on coalitions is a very interesting debate. Sometimes I think they're basically saying that there is no such thing as a coalition unless the French are involved," Bush told CNN recently.
"But the truth of the matter is, the French are involved in Afghanistan, and the French have been involved in Haiti. The French government just didn't agree with the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. And, therefore, there was a difference of opinion on that issue," he added.
Republicans have claimed Kerry would give the United Nations a veto over US military action, and Bush himself frequently says he "will never turn over America's national security decisions to leaders of other countries."
Kerry replied, in a recent speech to veterans, that he "will never give any nation -- or any international institution -- a veto over our national security."