Who will rid him of this meddlesome party?

It would be like a classic tragedy: The king--a noble figure doomed by a fatal flaw, distrust--successfully attacks his enemies, but soon grows distrustful of his commanders and courtiers when they seem to thwart his will, and so begins to attack them too, until only he is left.

Yes, it would be like a classic tragedy, if we weren't talking about George Bush, a man who's heavy on the flaws, light on the nobility. In the More Farce Than Tragedy department, therefore, we note this story, which was probably inevitable:

President Bush made an impassioned defense on Friday of his proposed rules for the interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects, warning that the nation's ability to defend itself would be undermined if rebellious Republicans in the Senate did not come around to his position.

Speaking at a late-morning news conference in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush said he would have no choice but to end a C.I.A. program for the interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects if Congress passed an alternate set of rules supported by a group of Senate Republicans.

Those alternate rules were adopted Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee in defiance of Mr. Bush. Setting out what he suggested could be dire consequences if that bill became law, Mr. Bush said intelligence officers - he referred to them repeatedly as "professionals" - would no longer be willing and able to conduct interrogations out of concern that the vague standard for acceptable techniques could leave them vulnerable to legal action.

"Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland," he said. "But the practical matter is if our professionals don't have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward."

The administration has said the Central Intelligence Agency has no "high value" terrorism suspects in foreign detention centers, having transferred the last of them this month to military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But officials said they considered the program crucial to efforts to foil attacks.

"This enemy has struck us, and they want to strike us again," Mr. Bush said, "and we'll give our folks the tools necessary to protect the country. It's a debate that, that really is going to define whether or not we can protect ourselves."

It was also a debate Mr. Bush had hoped to have this week exclusively with Democrats as he and his party's leadership set out to draw unflattering distinctions between Republicans and Democrats on fighting terrorism for the fall elections.

Instead, Mr. Bush spent Friday in a second day of heavy debate, casting some of the most respected voices on military matters in his own party as hindering the fight against terrorism. As of late Friday there seemed to be no break in the impasse, even as White House officials worked behind the scenes to build new support in the Senate for the legislation the president wants.

Leading the efforts against him in the Senate are three key Republicans on the Armed Services Committee with their own military credentials: the chairman and a former secretary of the Navy, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia; Senator John McCain of Arizona, a prisoner of war in Vietnam; and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a military judge. And publicly taking their side is Mr. Bush's former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell.

The dispute centers on whether to pass legislation reinterpreting a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3 that bars "outrages upon personal dignity"; the Supreme Court ruled that the provision applies to terrorism suspects. Mr. Bush argued that the convention's language was too vague and is proposing legislation to clarify the provisions. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'?" he said at one point.

Mr. McCain and his allies on the committee say reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions would open the door to rogue governments to interpret them as they see fit.

In a statement late Friday, Mr. McCain stuck to his position, saying that his proposed rules included legal protections for interrogators. "Weakening the Geneva protections is not only unnecessary, but would set an example to other countries, with less respect for basic human rights, that they could issue their own legislative reinterpretations," he said.

Mr. Bush rejected the crux of Mr. McCain's argument when a reporter asked him how he would react if nations like Iran or North Korea "roughed up" American soldiers under the guise of their own interpretations of Common Article 3.

"You can give a hypothetical about North Korea or any other country," Mr. Bush said, casting the question as steeped in moral relativism. "The point is that the program is not going to go forward if our professionals do not have clarity in the law."

He also discounted an argument made in a letter from Mr. Powell that his plan would encourage the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

Asked about that analysis, Mr. Bush said, "If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic."

There you have it: The president who made history last week by lobbying Congress in defense of torture, presuming to lecture anyone about the "compassion and decency of the American people."

And those interrogators who might be unable to do their job "out of concern that the vague standard for acceptable techniques could leave them vulnerable to legal action" might also be described as "people who don't want to be tried as war criminals." One way to prevent this--a seemingly obvious way, I'll admit--would be simply not to commit war crimes. The other way--call it "the Bush way"--would be to pressure a Republican congress to give you the necessary political and pseudo-legal cover, then commit the war crimes anyway,

(As a side note: There's an odd sort of materialistic thinking [and I use the T-word strictly without prejudice here] in the President's policies: It's as if he imagines that "America" is nothing more than the location of some valuable real estate. He's like an ideological neutron bomb: So long as the buildings are left standing, it doesn't matter to him that he's obliterated everything the nation stands for--in his mind, it still means he's "won.")

The logical extension of this attack on the congressional Republicans--who have been nothing if not accommodating to Bush all along--is this scene: It's late October, and Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Gonzales have sealed themselves in a bunker somewhere under the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the center of the room is a table with a dagger on it. They're each seated on the floor with their backs to a wall, eyes darting suspiciously from one to the next, twisting the skin on the back of their wrists to stay awake. Can't . . . close . . . my eyes . . . must . . . stay alert.