At the end of a disastrous week for the White House, which culminated in the indictment and resignation of senior aide Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Bush and senior Republicans launched a counter-offensive in a bid to regain the political initiative.

Republican leaders and commentators hailed the fact that Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, had not been indicted in the Plamegate scandal - which concerns the leaking of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame - as a sign that the worst is over. 'The wrongdoing leads in no way beyond this one individual [Libby] and what he allegedly said to FBI investigators and the grand jury,' said William Kristol, editor of the Conservative 'bible', The Weekly Standard

At the same time Bush used his weekly radio address yesterday to hail the 'great sacrifice' of American soldiers who had died in Iraq. 'The best way to honour the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and win the war on terror,' he said. His comments came as three more American soldiers were killed in Iraq to add to a toll that has already passed 2,000 since the invasion in 2003.

In the wake of Libby's indictment, the Republican strategy appears to be to try and put the Plamegate probe, which is led by Chicago prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, behind them. The message coming from Republicans is that Libby is the only person to be indicted, and even he was only charged for trying to cover up his story later.

Libby's lawyers seem to be preparing a defence based around Libby having a faulty memory of events and conversations rather than being involved in a deliberate conspiracy. 'We recognise that a person's recollection and memory of events will not always match those of other people, particularly when they are asked to testify months after the events occurred,' said his attorney, Joseph Tate.

Bush has spent this weekend at his Camp David retreat mulling a possible choice to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court. A strongly conservative anti-abortion candidate would go a long way to healing the rift with Bush's right-wing base and provide a vital fillip during the darkest times of Bush's five years in the White House.

However, that might not be easy. Reports have said that only last-minute talks and fresh evidence from Rove's legal team stopped Fitzgerald from indicting the president's most powerful adviser. Rove has also been identified as the mysterious 'Official A' in Libby's indictment who talked about Plame to conservative columnist Robert Novak. Rove's lawyer has also issued a statement saying that, while he has not been told he will be indicted in the future, neither has he been told he will not be.

However even if Rove is not indicted, he and a host of other officials are likely to be called as witnesses in Libby's coming criminal trial. Testimony is also likely to be sought from Libby's boss, Vice-President Dick Cheney, who Fitzgerald discovered discussed Plame with Libby.

At the same time, Plame's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, whose anti-war views are believed by many to be the reason Plame was outed, has spoken of his wife being threatened. 'There have been specific threats,' he told a television interviewer.

Wilson also attacked the Bush administration in a column in the Los Angeles Times published yesterday, saying that the White House had sought to smear him and his wife for trying to tell the truth about the abuse of intelligence on Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions in the run- up to the invasion of Iraq.

'The attacks on Valerie and me were upsetting, disruptive and vicious,' he said. 'They amounted to character assassination. Senior administration officials used the power of the White House to make our lives hell.'