WASHINGTON — When President Bush and his top aides gathered in July to plan a strategy for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was clear to all that they had to try to reset the clock — back to a time, before Iraq, when portraying Bush as a steely commander in chief was a far simpler task, and before Katrina, when questions about the administration's competence did not weigh so heavily.

From those discussions emerged the speeches Bush has delivered over the last week, the leading edge of a remarkably intensive and aggressive campaign in which he has attempted to regain ground he has lost for more than two years, by turning the conversation away from Iraq and back toward the broader war on terror.

On Monday, for the first time since the first anniversary in 2002, Bush will visit all three sites of the attack that remade his presidency — New York; Shanksville, Pa., and the Pentagon. Then he will cap the day and bring to a close this phase of his effort to portray himself and his party on his terms with a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office. It is bound to be reminiscent of his speech from the same seat exactly five years before, when, after a shaky day, he first pronounced the "Bush doctrine" that led to the toppling of the Taliban and ultimately became the heart of the administration's justification for invading Iraq.

Dan Bartlett, the counselor to the president, said: "We knew that news organizations and everyone else would be using this moment to define where we were five years later, and the president wanted to articulate his view, too. He's not trying to ignore Iraq — he wouldn't, he doesn't want to. But he had to explain that even if we have a debate here about whether Iraq's part of the war on terror, the enemy believes it is."

Bartlett, like Bush two weeks ago, said this was a moment of remembrance and a reminder of national resolve, not a moment for politics. But nine weeks before mid-term elections, it is impossible to separate remembrance and politics.

In interviews, Republican strategists who are aware of the closely held White House plans for this week say the critical question is whether Bush still holds the power to alter the course of national conversation away from the Iraq war and back to the theme that has worked for them before, countering direct threats to America.