WASHINGTON — President Bush apologized to troops face to face on Friday for shoddy conditions they have endured at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He shook the artificial hand of a lieutenant and cradled a newborn whose daddy is nursing his remaining, severely injured leg back to health.

"The problems at Walter Reed were caused by bureaucratic and administrative failures," Bush said during a nearly three-hour visit to the medical center — his first since reports surfaced of shabby conditions for veterans in outpatient housing. "The system failed you and it failed our troops, and we're going to fix it."

News that war veterans were not getting adequate care stunned the public, outraged Capitol Hill and forced three high-level Pentagon officials to step down. Bush met with soldiers once housed in Building 18, who endured moldy walls, rodents and other problems that went unchecked until reported by the media.

"I was disturbed by their accounts of what went wrong," Bush said. "It is not right to have someone volunteer to wear our uniform and not get the best possible care. I apologize for what they went through, and we're going to fix the problem."

He did not visit Building 18, which is now closed.

GONZALES VOWS TO REMAIN ON THE JOB

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales vowed Friday to remain on the job, digging in even as lawmakers questioned whether he could effectively run the Justice Department with no letup in the controversy over the firings of prosecutors

Gonzales sought to explain weeks of inconsistencies about how closely involved he had been in decisions to dismiss the eight U.S. attorneys. He said he had been aware his staff was drawing up plans for the firings but did not recall taking part in discussions over which people would actually be told to go.

"I believe in truth and accountability, and every step that I've taken is consistent with that principle," Gonzales said when questioned at a Boston event about preventing child sex abuse. "At the end of the day, I know what I did. And I know that the motivations for the decisions that I made were not based upon improper reasons."

Asked why he had not resigned, as some Democrats and Republicans have demanded, he said: "I am fighting for the truth."

Gonzales' credibility took a fresh hit this week with the Senate testimony of his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, who said the attorney general was regularly briefed about plans to fire the prosecutors and was involved with discussions about "this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign."

BRITISH MARINE APOLOGIZES FOR BEING IN IRAN WATERS

TEHRAN, Iran — A captive Royal Marine was shown in new TV footage Friday apologizing for being in Iranian waters, and Tehran made public a third letter supposedly written by the only woman prisoner among 15 Britons seized by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Britain sharply denounced Iran over the treatment of the captives — a clear sign both sides were hardening their stance as the crisis entered its second week.

Iran appeared intent on sending a message of strength as it faces mounting U.N. Nations sanctions over its uranium enrichment program, which the U.S. and other nations suspect the Islamic Republic is using to develop nuclear weapons.

Underlining Iran's hard-line sentiment, some 60,000 soccer fans chanted "Death to Britain" at a match in Tehran, while 700 people rallying near Tehran University yelled "We condemn the British invasion!" A Muslim cleric told worshippers during Friday prayers that "Britain is an aggressor and Iran has confronted it."

In the latest video broadcast by Iranian state television, Royal Marine rifleman Nathan Thomas Summers was pictured while sitting with another male captive, both in fatigues, and female British sailor Faye Turney in a blue jumpsuit and a black head scarf.

SAUDI DETAINEE CONTENDS HE WAS TORTURED

WASHINGTON — A Saudi terror suspect says U.S. interrogators tortured him for five years and he confessed to involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole just to satisfy them and "make the people happy," according to a Pentagon transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, is the second "high value" detainee to contend he was tortured while being held in secret CIA prisons prior to transfer to the detention site in Cuba last September.

In a transcript released Friday by the Pentagon, he said he made up the stories linking him to the Cole attack, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead and nearly sank the $1 billion destroyer in Aden harbor in 2000.

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me. It happened during interviews. One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way," al-Nashiri said, according to the transcript of a hearing at the Guantanamo detention center on March 14. "I just said those things to make the people happy. They were very happy when I told them those things."

The hearing transcript does not include any details of the torture that al-Nashiri said took place. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said any allegations would be investigated and that portions of the 36-page transcript were blacked out because of national security concerns. Those details can include interrogation techniques and information about confinement.

SEAN LENNON RECALLS 'MIND-BLOWING' INCIDENT

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Sean Lennon is accustomed to people recognizing him because of his famous parents, but one incident really caught him off-guard. "When I was 15, a cabdriver asked me if I was Paul McCartney's daughter," the 31-year-old singer told AP Radio in a recent interview. "That really blew my mind."

Lennon said he usually finds himself unfazed by all the attention he gets as the son of Yoko Ono and former Beatle John Lennon, who was killed in New York City in 1980.

"I don't have any perspective on a life without people freaking out about my parents, so I don't know what it would be like for that not to happen," he said.

"People only have glimpses of like, you know, who I might be and I don't think people have a real sense of what I'm like necessarily," he said. "I get the spoiled-rich-kid thing a lot and I get the serious-thing a lot, but I think people are misunderstanding me."