Bush spin doctor is recalled in bid to control news

George Bush has recalled Karen Hughes, his longtime close political adviser, to help shape his administration's tightly controlled communications strategy for the war against Iraq.

The decision is being seen as further proof of how an administration that is secretive and virtually leak-proof even in normal times is circling the wagons even closer. A typical example was yesterday's stern warning to journalists by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, not to divulge information that might help the enemy.

Ms Hughes has been one of Mr Bush's most trusted aides since his days as Governor of Texas. She left the White House last summer to return to Texas and spend more time with her family. But for the past week she has been back in Washington, a participant in the President's most important counsels.

She accompanied Mr Bush to the summit with Tony Blair and Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister, in the Azores last Sunday and briefed reporters before Mr Bush's address on Monday evening in which he gave up on diplomacy and set Saddam Hussein a 48-hour deadline to leave Iraq. All along, Ms Hughes has played an important role in keeping Mr Bush "on message" and ensuring he appears only in tightly controlled environments. That will be doubly true now, as America mounts a relentless propaganda campaign to justify the invasion of Iraq.

That message is that President Saddam, not Mr Bush, is responsible for the war; that it is a war to disarm a country which is "a grave danger to the world", as Mr Bush declared on Wednesday; that President Saddam is armed to the teeth with chemical and biological weapons (and soon, according to Vice-President Dick Cheney, nuclear weapons as well); and that the "liberation" of Iraq will shine as a beacon of hope throughout the Middle East.

The mantra is repeated daily by Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush's notably uncommunicative spokesman. But Washington has been caught bending the truth already, most notably over Saddam Hussein's links with al-Qa'ida, and the forged document purporting to show that Iraq had bought uranium from Niger. Similar doubts surround American claims yesterday that oil fields near Basra had been set on fire, an allegation disputed by eyewitnesses.

Above all though, the return to the colours of Ms Hughes, a veteran of the Bush campaigns of 1994, 1998 and 2000, is evidence of how thoughts are already beginning to turn to 2004 – though no Bush aide would admit as much. President Bush's chances of a second term hinge on the war – not so much on its ultimate outcome, but on how quickly and with how few casualties, both Iraqi and American, that objective is achieved.