Q: The president in his speech said that the United States "will never accept anything less than complete victory." How is "complete victory" defined by the administration?

That depends on whom you ask, and when you ask. The new "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq'' gives a short-, medium- and long-term definition. The short term definition isn't really victory at all. It calls for Iraq to "make steady progress'' in fighting terrorists, holding elections and reaching other political milestones, and beginning to create security forces. If that's short-term victory, then the Iraqi government could argue that it has already won.

But clearly it takes more, and in the White House definition, over the medium-term Iraq has to take the lead in facing terrorists, providing its own security, and creating a "fully constitutional government.'' In the long term, the White House wants an Iraq that is "peaceful, united, stable, and secure'' and a "full partner'' in what President Bush calls the "global war on terrorism.'' Victory by this definition, it seems safe to say, is a good ways off. Many American officials say they think troops could begin to come home as soon as the government in Iraq was stable enough that it could not be toppled by al Qaeda, or Saddam's sympathizers, or feuding Shiites and Sunnis. But as we've learned in Afghanistan, conditions can change fast, and opponents of the government can seize territory and gain in strength. For that reason, some long-term American presence in Iraq seems highly likely. The question is how big a force will be needed.

Q: The president has two more speeches on the war before Iraq's parliamentary elections on December 15. What will he talk about in these speeches? Will a successful election provide some stability to the situation on the ground? 

Next Monday he'll be talking about political stability, and before the Thursday election we expect he'll wrap up his series of four speeches with a message that will be equally directed at Americans and Iraqis. But no one knows whether a successful election will usher in stability or instability -- or, more likely, something in between. There will be jockeying for jobs. There will likely be attacks on the new parliamentary leaders. And there is always the possibility that the resulting coalition government will be deadlocked on big issues -- something familiar to mature democracies as well. The big question is whether Iraqi forces feel loyal to the new government.

Q: Are the president's speech and the newly-released war strategy resonating with American public? Where is the public opinion on pre-war intelligence, the execution of the war and a timetable for troop withdrawal, respectively?      

It's always hard to tell how much a single speech resonates, but a New York Times/CBS News Poll taken just a few days after his "Plan for Victory'' speech in Annapolis showed that the president's approval rating, which had dropped to a low of 35 percent, was back up to 40 percent. That's no reason for celebration in the White House -- 53 percent still disapprove of how he is handling his job -- but it shows that the President is bouncing back. 

More than half of those polled -- 52 percent -- said the Bush administration deliberately deceived the public when it made its case for war with Iraq; 44 percent said it did not. But that question is a bit different from asking whether the underlying intelligence was itself wrong.                    

Interestingly, about 57 percent said Congress is not asking enough questions about the war. (Twenty-three percent said there were too many questions, a result that is bound to be a shock to my fellow journalists. We don't believe you can ever ask too many questions.) And most seem to think there should be a timetable for withdrawal. But the politics of this are complex: About a third of those polled said that if their own representative called for an immediate withdrawal of troops, they would be less likely to vote for him or her next November.  Of course, the real answer may be that voters could well decide whether withdrawal was a good idea after they see if it works. Hindsight can change everything.

Q: What are the alternatives leading Democrats have offered to solve the problems in Iraq? Are they still standing behind their votes in 2002 for the invasion of Iraq?

It's hard to say where Democrats stand, because they are standing in lots of different places. Some, like Rep. John Murtha, want a timetable for withdrawal. But many in the party are unwilling to go on record favoring that. Others say that had they known in 2002 what they know now about the faulty intelligence, they would have voted differently -- but that position, of course, isn't much help in figuring out what to do now, with Saddam on trial, 160,000 troops in the country, and the reconstruction effort facing a new start.

At the other extreme, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut has stuck with the president, and Mr. Bush has begun citing him as a supporter of the administration's policy.

The fact is that Democrats don't have to come up with a unified position -- yet. But as the presidential election approaches, they are going to have to make some tough choices.

Q: We noticed that during your trip to Asia, you filed diligently for the website and the newspaper. How do you find the time to write so many articles? What is life like for a newspaper reporter on a foreign trip? Do you even have time to take a shower?        

Here's the good news: I made time for showers, in deference to my colleagues, who had to sit next to me on the press plane. But that came out of my sleeping time, which was limited to a few hours a night. In fact, these trips are a giant sleep deprivation experiment, interspersed with crazy deadlines. I usually wrote two stories a day for the Times; one at the end of the day in Asia, another -- an update for our second edition -- in the middle of our next day. I reworked versions of the same story for the Asian edition of the International Herald Tribune (which the Times owns), and updated them for the European editions. I wrote for our website, so that anyone who went to nytimes.com would find the latest news on the trip.

Unfortunately, that didn't leave me much time to do what I like to do most: Get out and talk to ordinary people on the street, or to foreign leaders, about their reactions to the President's travels and to his message. That's what I used to do all the time when I lived in Asia -- I was the Tokyo bureau chief for the Times a decade ago --- and I miss it.

But I did have some fun. On the first day of the trip, before President Bush arrived, I took some of my colleagues on a temple tour of Kyoto -- and we ended up in a noodle shop, where slurping is officially sanctioned, even encouraged. In Beijing, I took an hour off to walk through the Forbidden City, something I hadn't done in years. And in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, I had an urgent mission: I went shopping to find my sons those great hats with the spike that sticks up from the center. You don't see those every day in Washington, and they've been wearing them around the house.