WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - Pressing a broad and vigorous defense of the war in Iraq, President Bush told the nation tonight that while the recent elections in Iraq will not end violence there, they do send a clear message to terrorists who "feel a tightening noose - and fear the rise of a democratic Iraq."

On Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended a government program of warrantless eavesdropping.
Amid rising tensions in Congress over the war and antiterrorism measures at home, and amid indications of declining public support, the president chose to deliver his televised address from the Oval Office, the first speech from that venue since he announced in March 2003 that he had ordered the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Bush did not cover significant new ground, but rather used the prime-time television slot and the backdrop of the Oval Office for a summation of the arguments he has advanced in three recent addresses defending and explaining his policies.

The president, mindful that "many Americans have questions about the cost and direction of this war," argued that it is far too early to abandon hopes for the emergence of a stable and peaceful Iraqi democracy, one that would be "an ally of growing strength."

"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost, and not worth another dime or another day," he said. "I don"t believe that. Our military commanders do not believe that. Our troops in the field, who bear the burden and make the sacrifice, do not believe that America has lost."

The president also cautioned that the relatively peaceful and popular elections held in Iraq last week will not put an end to the insurgency that has taken the lives of more than 2,000 Americans and thousands more Iraqis. But he argued that the goal is worth the sacrifice.

"This election will not mean the end of violence," Mr. Bush said. "But it is the beginning of something new: constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East. And this vote 6,000 miles away, in a vital region of the world means that America has an ally of growing strength in the fight against terror."

The president also sought to counter the calls from critics inside and outside Congress that his administration"s strategy in Iraq is flawed and that it is time to change course and consider withdrawing troops.

"It is also important for every American to understand the consequences of pulling out of Iraq before our work is done," he said. "We would abandon our Iraqi friends and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word."

"We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us and the global terrorist movement would be emboldened and more dangerous than ever before," he said.

The speech, the president"s fourth on security matters in six days, comes as a surge in Congressional resistance over the war and over some tactics used in the fight against terror have left the administration feeling embattled.

At least two Democratic senators said today that one of those tactics - the secret surveillance, without warrants, of people in the United States thought to have possible terror links -- might be illegal.

The White House has launched an unusually intense campaign in recent weeks to reassure Americans and to try to quiet the new Congressional restiveness, which has left lawmakers less reluctant to contest administration security stances than in times nearer to the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared twice on television today to defend the newly disclosed government program of warrantless eavesdropping in the United States. The 2001 terror attacks, she said, injected "a certain urgency" into the need for timely surveillance, and she asserted that President Bush had acted with full legal authority.

"We simply can"t be in a situation in which the president is not responding to this different kind of war on terrorism," Ms. Rice said on the Fox News Channel, echoing Mr. Bush"s own defense of the program in televised remarks on Saturday, and his insistence that previous practices had proved insufficient.

But two Democratic senators, Carl Levin of Michigan and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, said that President Bush might have broken the law.


"The issue here is whether the president of the United States is putting himself above the law," Mr. Feingold, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said on CNN, "and I believe he has done so here." Mr. Levin, appearing on NBC, called the program "extremely dangerous."

Forum: The Transition in Iraq
The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who on Friday had said that it was "inexcusable to have spying on people in the United States without court surveillance in violation of our law," moderated his tone today.

But he still said that he would hold hearings to investigate the matter.

"Whether it was legal, I think, is a matter that has to be examined," Mr. Specter said today. Noting that the administration had asserted that the president had both constitutional and statutory authority for the program, he added, "I"d like to know specifically what the administration has in mind."

He also accused Democrats of "a stampede to judgment."

Ms. Rice spoke a day after Mr. Bush acknowledged ordering the National Security Agency to go beyond its core mission of intercepting foreign electronic communications and undertake secret eavesdropping in the United States.

President Bush has gone to some effort to underscore the importance of the relatively peaceful Iraqi elections as a historic landmark. That such news has had to vie for attention with recent Congressional attacks on administration security policy appears to have engendered White House frustration.

The recent defections of some Republican lawmakers on key security votes, however, has begun to move beyond a simple annoyance for the administration.

Its latest legislative setback came Friday, hours after The New York Times disclosed the secret surveillance program, when Democratic senators and a handful of Republicans -- some mentioning the Times article -- blocked reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the legislation passed in late 2001 that had expanded presidential powers to conduct surveillance, with warrants.

A day earlier, Mr. Bush had been forced to accept an amendment sponsored by Senator McCain to limit the interrogation techniques that C.I.A. officers and other nonmilitary personnel can use.

All of that left Ms. Rice on the defensive today, particularly over the decision to allow secret domestic surveillance.

Critics of such monitoring note that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows secret surveillance when approved by a special court that operates inside the Justice Department. This court has rarely rejected administration requests.

But Ms. Rice asserted that FISA, a 1978 act, had not anticipated anything like the 2001 terror attacks -- and that more aggressive surveillance might have helped prevent them.

"We don"t ever want to be caught again in a situation in which we were before 9/11," Secretary Rice said on Fox, adding that the unmasking of such a secret program was "really a serious matter."

On Saturday, Mr. Bush said that as a result of the public disclosure of the program, "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

In acknowledging that he had ordered the eavesdropping program, the president called it "a vital tool in our war against the terrorists" and defended it as being "fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities."

Secretary Rice said that lawyers from the White House, the Justice Department and the National Security Agency had cleared the program; and that Congressional leaders of both parties were briefed at the programs inception.

But Democrats bridled today at what they said was a White House effort to spread responsibility.

The Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, asked on Fox whether he had been among those briefed, allowed that he had been a couple of months ago but that "the president can"t pass the buck on this one," adding, "This is his program, he"s commander-in-chief."

Congress has not been involved in setting up this program, he said.

Senator McCain, the Republican whose unbending stance on torture demonstrated his willingness to take on the Bush administration, was notably reticent when he was offered several opportunities to criticize the surveillance program.

He reminded a questioner on ABC that "September 11th, as we know, changed everything."