thedrifter
12-19-05, 07:03 AM
Bush Urges Patience for Iraq Mission
He acknowledges 'terrible loss' but says 'we are winning.' His speech culminates an effort to stem a drop in support for the war.
By Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — President Bush, trying to shore up sagging public support for the war in Iraq, urged Americans on Sunday to "have patience" with the U.S. mission there even though it had turned out to be more difficult than expected.
In a nationally televised address, Bush acknowledged that his decision to go to war in March 2003 was based in part on faulty intelligence and had led to "terrible loss" as military and civilian casualties mounted.
But he said that removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right thing to do and that suicide bombings and insurgent attacks were obscuring steady progress on the military, economic and political fronts.
"For every scene of destruction in Iraq, there are more scenes of rebuilding and hope. For every life lost, there are countless more lives reclaimed. And for every terrorist working to stop freedom in Iraq, there are many more Iraqis and Americans working to defeat them," said Bush, speaking at his Oval Office desk.
"My fellow citizens: Not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq," he said.
The president's 17-minute address, carried live by the major networks, culminated a White House campaign to counteract a decline in public and congressional support for his Iraq policy, including pressure to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The address received mixed reviews on Capitol Hill.
In the last 2 1/2 weeks, Bush delivered a series of four speeches outlining his strategy for training Iraqi security forces, rebuilding Iraq's economy and infrastructure, and establishing a democracy to replace Hussein's autocracy.
The speeches and Sunday night's prime-time address were timed around Thursday's parliamentary elections, in which more than 10 million Iraqis cast ballots to select 275 members of a new national assembly. Voting was relatively peaceful, with turnout high even among Iraq's restive Sunni minority.
On Sunday, Bush said Iraq had become a staging ground in the broader battle against Islamic radicals whose objective was "to wage a perpetual war" against America and its allies, and he rejected critics' assertions that the presence of U.S. forces there was fueling the insurgency.
"If we were not fighting them in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Southeast Asia and in other places, the terrorists would not be peaceful citizens," Bush said. "They would be on the offense and headed our way."
Bush acknowledged that the challenge of stabilizing Iraq had proved more difficult than expected and that prewar intelligence asserting that Hussein held weapons of mass destruction had turned out to be wrong.
But he was unrepentant about the decision to go to war. "Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong…. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power," he said.
Bush told those who did not support his decision to go to war: "I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt.
"Yet now there are only two options before our country — victory or defeat," he said.
That assertion was reminiscent of Bush's statement at a news conference with French President Jacques Chirac on Nov. 6, 2001, during the war in Afghanistan: "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
Bush associates and members of Congress have frequently commented on the president's description of the war against terrorism — including, as he sees it, the war in Iraq — as a stark struggle between good and evil, with the president leading the forces of good.
As the decision to go to war with Iraq approached, Bush told a British interviewer: "I don't do nuance."
Democrats in Congress have been stepping up their criticism of the administration's Iraq policy, and some Republicans have become more guarded in expressing their support.
In a telephone interview Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Bush's speech was noteworthy for what it didn't say.
"It was a restatement of the justification for the war, of how important it is to win, but he didn't really talk about what it's going to take to win," Feinstein said. "He's trying to rally the American people, but I'm not sure that he rallied the American people."
Senate Armed Services Committee member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) praised the president for "being candid about mistakes in the past" but added: "There are problems in Iraq that need to be discussed that the president didn't discuss."
But Republican legislators for the most part rallied to Bush's side.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said in a statement that Bush had laid out a plan "that will protect Americans, bring stability to the region and extend freedom to the Iraqi people," and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), a Bush ally and former House majority leader, said Bush "was clear, specific and resolute about America's objectives in Iraq and our commitment to finishing our work there."
Speaking on CNN after the speech, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described the speech as positive. "We must succeed in Iraq," he said.
The White House campaign to use the Iraqi elections to revive support for administration policy was nearly overshadowed by unexpected setbacks at home.
On the day of the elections, Bush abandoned a previous veto threat and agreed to support legislation banning the use of inhumane interrogation tactics to extract information from suspected terrorists.
The next day, Washington was roiled by reports that Bush had authorized, without court approval, secret wiretaps of phone calls and other communications between people in this country and possible terrorist operatives overseas.
Also Friday, Senate Democrats and a few Republicans used a parliamentary maneuver to block renewal of the Patriot Act, which contains provisions designed to increase the government's ability to track and prosecute terrorists.
Those developments turned a week in which White House officials had thought "they were going to have an unalloyed triumph in Iraq" into one of political counter-punching, said David Gergen, a former advisor to Republican and Democratic presidents.
"All of these things have taken the shine off the election," Gergen said. The primary objective of Sunday's speech, he said, was to restore the lost luster.
Even before the setbacks, the White House was struggling to reverse a slide in the president's approval ratings and in public support for the Iraq mission, as measured by opinion polls.
Overall support for Bush has bounced around 40% in recent weeks, considerably below the levels of his first term. In recent surveys, sizable majorities said they believed the Iraq war was a mistake, although similar majorities indicated they thought it would be a mistake to withdraw troops immediately.
In the White House, the president and his aides decided to step up the rhetorical assault. On Saturday, Bush delivered a rare live radio address in which he defended the domestic surveillance program as a necessary tool to deter terrorist attacks, and denounced as "irresponsible" the filibuster that waylaid the Patriot Act.
On Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney jumped into the fray. Cheney, who left Washington on Saturday for visits to South Asia and the Middle East, made an unexpected trip to Iraq to call attention to signs of progress there.
Using an Airstream travel trailer placed inside a C-17 transport plane as his office and private quarters, Cheney flew overnight from England to Baghdad, where he met with Iraqi leaders and military commanders in the Green Zone, so called for its heavy fortifications. He later attended an Iraqi training exercise at Taji Air Base and spoke to troops at Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq.
"I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we'll see that the year '05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq," Cheney told Marine Cpl. Bradley Warren, who participated in a round-table discussion at Al-Asad Air Base. "We're getting the job done. It's hard to tell that from watching the news."
Times staff writers Doyle McManus, Peter G. Gosselin, Mary Curtius, Paul Richter and Mark Mazzetti contributed to this report.
Ellie
He acknowledges 'terrible loss' but says 'we are winning.' His speech culminates an effort to stem a drop in support for the war.
By Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — President Bush, trying to shore up sagging public support for the war in Iraq, urged Americans on Sunday to "have patience" with the U.S. mission there even though it had turned out to be more difficult than expected.
In a nationally televised address, Bush acknowledged that his decision to go to war in March 2003 was based in part on faulty intelligence and had led to "terrible loss" as military and civilian casualties mounted.
But he said that removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right thing to do and that suicide bombings and insurgent attacks were obscuring steady progress on the military, economic and political fronts.
"For every scene of destruction in Iraq, there are more scenes of rebuilding and hope. For every life lost, there are countless more lives reclaimed. And for every terrorist working to stop freedom in Iraq, there are many more Iraqis and Americans working to defeat them," said Bush, speaking at his Oval Office desk.
"My fellow citizens: Not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq," he said.
The president's 17-minute address, carried live by the major networks, culminated a White House campaign to counteract a decline in public and congressional support for his Iraq policy, including pressure to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The address received mixed reviews on Capitol Hill.
In the last 2 1/2 weeks, Bush delivered a series of four speeches outlining his strategy for training Iraqi security forces, rebuilding Iraq's economy and infrastructure, and establishing a democracy to replace Hussein's autocracy.
The speeches and Sunday night's prime-time address were timed around Thursday's parliamentary elections, in which more than 10 million Iraqis cast ballots to select 275 members of a new national assembly. Voting was relatively peaceful, with turnout high even among Iraq's restive Sunni minority.
On Sunday, Bush said Iraq had become a staging ground in the broader battle against Islamic radicals whose objective was "to wage a perpetual war" against America and its allies, and he rejected critics' assertions that the presence of U.S. forces there was fueling the insurgency.
"If we were not fighting them in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Southeast Asia and in other places, the terrorists would not be peaceful citizens," Bush said. "They would be on the offense and headed our way."
Bush acknowledged that the challenge of stabilizing Iraq had proved more difficult than expected and that prewar intelligence asserting that Hussein held weapons of mass destruction had turned out to be wrong.
But he was unrepentant about the decision to go to war. "Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong…. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power," he said.
Bush told those who did not support his decision to go to war: "I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt.
"Yet now there are only two options before our country — victory or defeat," he said.
That assertion was reminiscent of Bush's statement at a news conference with French President Jacques Chirac on Nov. 6, 2001, during the war in Afghanistan: "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
Bush associates and members of Congress have frequently commented on the president's description of the war against terrorism — including, as he sees it, the war in Iraq — as a stark struggle between good and evil, with the president leading the forces of good.
As the decision to go to war with Iraq approached, Bush told a British interviewer: "I don't do nuance."
Democrats in Congress have been stepping up their criticism of the administration's Iraq policy, and some Republicans have become more guarded in expressing their support.
In a telephone interview Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Bush's speech was noteworthy for what it didn't say.
"It was a restatement of the justification for the war, of how important it is to win, but he didn't really talk about what it's going to take to win," Feinstein said. "He's trying to rally the American people, but I'm not sure that he rallied the American people."
Senate Armed Services Committee member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) praised the president for "being candid about mistakes in the past" but added: "There are problems in Iraq that need to be discussed that the president didn't discuss."
But Republican legislators for the most part rallied to Bush's side.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said in a statement that Bush had laid out a plan "that will protect Americans, bring stability to the region and extend freedom to the Iraqi people," and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), a Bush ally and former House majority leader, said Bush "was clear, specific and resolute about America's objectives in Iraq and our commitment to finishing our work there."
Speaking on CNN after the speech, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described the speech as positive. "We must succeed in Iraq," he said.
The White House campaign to use the Iraqi elections to revive support for administration policy was nearly overshadowed by unexpected setbacks at home.
On the day of the elections, Bush abandoned a previous veto threat and agreed to support legislation banning the use of inhumane interrogation tactics to extract information from suspected terrorists.
The next day, Washington was roiled by reports that Bush had authorized, without court approval, secret wiretaps of phone calls and other communications between people in this country and possible terrorist operatives overseas.
Also Friday, Senate Democrats and a few Republicans used a parliamentary maneuver to block renewal of the Patriot Act, which contains provisions designed to increase the government's ability to track and prosecute terrorists.
Those developments turned a week in which White House officials had thought "they were going to have an unalloyed triumph in Iraq" into one of political counter-punching, said David Gergen, a former advisor to Republican and Democratic presidents.
"All of these things have taken the shine off the election," Gergen said. The primary objective of Sunday's speech, he said, was to restore the lost luster.
Even before the setbacks, the White House was struggling to reverse a slide in the president's approval ratings and in public support for the Iraq mission, as measured by opinion polls.
Overall support for Bush has bounced around 40% in recent weeks, considerably below the levels of his first term. In recent surveys, sizable majorities said they believed the Iraq war was a mistake, although similar majorities indicated they thought it would be a mistake to withdraw troops immediately.
In the White House, the president and his aides decided to step up the rhetorical assault. On Saturday, Bush delivered a rare live radio address in which he defended the domestic surveillance program as a necessary tool to deter terrorist attacks, and denounced as "irresponsible" the filibuster that waylaid the Patriot Act.
On Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney jumped into the fray. Cheney, who left Washington on Saturday for visits to South Asia and the Middle East, made an unexpected trip to Iraq to call attention to signs of progress there.
Using an Airstream travel trailer placed inside a C-17 transport plane as his office and private quarters, Cheney flew overnight from England to Baghdad, where he met with Iraqi leaders and military commanders in the Green Zone, so called for its heavy fortifications. He later attended an Iraqi training exercise at Taji Air Base and spoke to troops at Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq.
"I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we'll see that the year '05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq," Cheney told Marine Cpl. Bradley Warren, who participated in a round-table discussion at Al-Asad Air Base. "We're getting the job done. It's hard to tell that from watching the news."
Times staff writers Doyle McManus, Peter G. Gosselin, Mary Curtius, Paul Richter and Mark Mazzetti contributed to this report.
Ellie