The United States, faced with growing military casualties in Iraq, announced on Tuesday that it was scrapping a plan to reduce its forces and would keep about 138,000 troops in that country through at least the end of 2005.
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"You're going to have a period of increased (insurgent) attacks. We just have to expect that," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said as U.S. forces face an upsurge of violence in the run-up to a scheduled June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis.

But there's another possibility, one only now being floated by a few political operatives: 2004 could be a decisive victory for Kerry. The reason to think so is historical. Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent--and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins. If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls--such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November--it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it's going to be Kerry in a rout.
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Historically, when incumbents lose big, they do so for sound reasons: The public sees their policies as not working--or worse yet, as failures. That's certainly increasingly true of Bush today. From the chaos in Iraq to an uncomfortably soft economic recovery to the passage of an unpopular Medicare bill, the White House is having a harder and harder time putting a positive spin on the effects of the president's decisions.