What Is Mainstream?

* 63 percent feel they cannot trust the Bush administration to honestly and accurately report intelligence about possible threats from other countries.

Dan Balz and Jon Cohen write about the poll in The Washington Post; Gary Langer for ABC News.

A new Gallup Poll finds that 65 percent of Americans see the British troop withdrawal announcement as a sign that things are going poorly in Iraq, rather than well -- contrary to the White House spin.

Another Gallup Poll, this one on the U.S. role in the world, finds that a record 73 percent of Americans say they don't think leaders of other countries around the world have respect for Bush, and 61 percent are dissatisfied with the position of the United States in the world today.

Cheney Unhurt in Suicide Bombing

Howard Schneider writes for The Washington Post: "Vice President Cheney was shuttled into a bomb shelter at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan this morning after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the main gate in an attack Taliban officials say was aimed at the vice president.

"Cheney was uninjured and in no real danger from the blast, which killed four people, including a U.S. soldier, at the gate of the Bagram Airfield.

"Although the vice president heard what he described as a 'loud boom' at around 10 a.m. Afghan time, the explosion occurred far from the building where Cheney had spent the night awaiting a meeting with Afghan President Hamad Karzai. . . .

"[C]oming near the end of an unannounced trip whose itinerary was closely guarded, the incident highlighted some of the same concerns about resurgent Taliban activity in the area that Cheney had traveled to the region to address.

Here is the transcript of Cheney's brief remarks to the travel pool: "It seems to me I think it was about 10:00 a.m. this morning, I heard a loud boom. And shortly after that, the Secret Service came in and told me there had been an attack on the main gate, apparently a suicide bomber," he said.

"They moved me for a relatively brief period of time to one of the bomb shelters nearby, near the quarters I was staying in. And as the situation settled down, and they got a better sense in terms of what was going in, then I went back to my room. It was almost time to leave. . . .

"I think they clearly try to find ways to question the authority of the central government. Striking at Bagram with a suicide bomber, I suppose, is one way to do that. But it shouldn't affect our behavior at all."

Alisa Tang notes for the Associated Press that the attack "was the closest that militants have come to a top U.S. official visiting Afghanistan."