This display of hypermasculinity in the midst of wartime, some concluded, would have a particular appeal for women voters. Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan said that she half expected Bush to "tear open his shirt and reveal the big S on his chest". One Wall Street Journal columnist pronounced him "a hottie". Rightwing talkshow host G Gordon Liddy proclaimed that the president "has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America".

Mr Annan, who last week branded the US-led war in Iraq "illegal", told the UN general assembly that international law remained the cornerstone of global stability in a speech laced with many veiled - and at least one explicit - criticism of the US.

Declaring his confidence that "this young century will be liberty's century", Mr Bush told the UN general assembly in New York that Iraq and Afghanistan were poised to become examples for the rest of the Middle East of peaceful, democratic societies.

Of the numerous responses from the public I received, most were supportive but many were more abusive than the original message. One stood out. Incensed that something as "trivial" as racist abuse could lead to a man losing his job, one reader compared me to the person who betrayed Anne Frank. And so, through contorted metaphor and contemptuous logic, the harasser became the victim and the harassed was transformed into the perpetrator.

After a fortnight of trailing heavily against George Bush, the Democratic challenger John Kerry appeared to have recovered much of the lost ground in two polls.

Even the best-case scenario for Iraq is a political, economic and security situation described as tenuous.

The three were seized early yesterday from a house in Mansour, an affluent suburb where several embassies and foreign companies are based.

The Jamaican prime minister, PJ Patterson, declared a state of emergency and pleaded with half a million people living in vulnerable areas to leave their homes as Hurricane Ivan raced towards the island last night.

· My boss reminded me that I needed to go to the embassy cashier to pick up my allowance - I was supposed to travel to Accra, in Ghana, for a conference for American embassy computer managers in Africa.

"Make no mistake about it," said a Republican strategist at the time. "Bush is personally obsessed with diversity." That obsession, even at this cosmetic level, seems to have long passed.

"He will be having surgery early in the week," his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton said last night after visiting her husband in hospital.

While George Bush was delivering his keynote speech, demonstrators trickled out, complaining of being held in a bus cleaning station beside the Hudson river without access to lawyers.

Linda Allison told the political website salon.com that throughout the time Mr Bush was in Alabama she never saw him in uniform and had no idea he was supposed to be in the national guard.

But if Arnold Schwarzenegger was miscast in his new supporting role - a pro-choice, gun control liberal in a deeply conservative setting - then both he and the audience masked it well. For when the former action hero and current governor of California took to the stage of Madison Square Garden the faithful were ready for him.

"If they don't like it they shouldn't come," said David. "They're murderers. I want them to feel uncomfortable. I want them to feel embarrassed. I want them to feel ashamed."