Washington ? After more than three years of prosecuting the war in Iraq as a matter of fighting the “global war on terror,” President Bush faces the challenge of defending the war in his party’s struggle for control of Congress this fall.

The president waged an impassioned and sometimes heated defense of the war in a news conference Monday. But he acknowledged his frustration at times with the progress of the Iraqi security force even as he insisted on the importance of maintaining the U.S. military mission “until the job is done.”

Yet as the war in Iraq becomes a focal point of many fall campaigns at home, Bush faces a daunting political challenge: upholding the costly, unpopular presence of American forces in Iraq as a growing chorus of Democratic congressional candidates demands a strategy for withdrawal.

The president is supporting a strategy already outlined by the GOP and played out on the campaign trail by Vice President Dick Cheney and others based on the view that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would leave Americans more vulnerable to terrorism at home. While Cheney warns that anti-war critics are playing into the hands of “al-Qaida types” who might attack the U.S., Bush is waging a more conciliatory argument with opponents, asserting that he does not question their patriotism.

“There’s a lot of people – good, decent people – saying, ‘Withdraw now.’ They’re absolutely wrong,” Bush said in a nearly hourlong news conference. “What matters is that in this campaign … we clarify the different point of view. There are a lot of people in the Democrat Party who believe that the best course of action is to leave Iraq before the job is done, period. And they’re wrong.”

The war in Iraq isn’t the only crisis in the Middle East facing the president.

President Bush pauses during a news conference in the White House Conference Center across from the White House grounds Monday in Washington. Bush on Monday called for quick deployment of an international force to help uphold the fragile cease-fire in Lebanon.

Bush announced Monday that he will boost his commitment of humanitarian aid and money for reconstruction of war-torn Lebanon from $50 million to more than $230 million, as the U.S. helps the Lebanese rebuild roads, bridges and schools bombed and shelled in a monthlong conflict between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon. Bush also called on a balking international community to deploy the forces needed for a United Nations-sponsored peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

The president also faces a showdown in the U.N. with Iran, which is refusing to suspend its enrichment of uranium. Iran is unlikely to meet an Aug. 31 U.N. deadline for suspension of the enrichment, which it claims will support civilian nuclear power but which the West views as part of a bomb-building program.

“Iran is obviously … part of the problem” of securing peace in the broader Middle East, Bush said. “They sponsor Hezbollah. … Imagine how difficult this issue would be if Iran had a nuclear weapon.”

But it is the war in Iraq that is weighing most heavily on the fall campaign as Bush tries to stave off a Democratic takeover of Congress that would make his final two years in office much tougher.

Democrats wasted little time Monday going after Bush’s comments.

“President Bush’s plan for his final two years amounts to three simple words: Stay the course,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the Democratic congressional campaign.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the president misguided in framing the war as “a question of resolve. Instead, it is a question of strategy. … Three years into the war in Iraq, the unfortunate truth is that the president’s strategy is a failure.”