McCain Backs Bush Over Conflict

Senator John McCain, once the Republican frontrunner in the 2008 presidential race, attempted to resurrect his faltering campaign yesterday with a risky speech expressing almost complete support for president George Bush's Iraq strategy.

All the Democratic candidates are opposed to the war and even his Republican rivals pay only lip service, but Mr McCain described it as necessary and just. Speaking at a military academy in Virginia, he said: "A defeat for the United States is a cause for mourning, not celebrating."

Mr McCain, after more than a year as the Republican frontrunner, has been dropping in the polls and raised less in funding in the first three months of this year than his main rivals, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. His campaign team billed yesterday's speech as key to a revival.

But Mr McCain is pushing against public opinion, which shows an increasing majority in favour of early US withdrawal. He was ridiculed last week when he claimed on a visit to a Baghdad market that the city was not as bad as the media suggested: he was surrounded by 100 troops and helicopter gunships.

He said yesterday: "Let's put aside for a moment the small politics of the day. The judgment of history should be the approval we seek, not the temporary favour of the latest public opinion poll."