Monday, December 19, 2005

White House presses nation for resolve to win in iraq

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/19/BUSH.TMP

White House presses nation for resolve to win in iraq
Bush: Speech admits errors, hails elections as milestone
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Monday, December 19, 2005

Washington -- President Bush told a national television audience Sunday evening that last week's parliamentary elections in Iraq represented a democratic breakthrough for the Middle East and warned that a U.S. pullout from Iraq would hand terrorists a major victory.

In a plea for Americans to show patience in a war effort that he conceded has been marred by wrong prewar intelligence and blunders in 34 months of fighting, the president did not set a timetable for withdrawing any of the 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. But he but did say that as more Iraqi forces are trained next year and assume more responsibility for fighting, fewer Americans will be needed.

"As these achievements come, it should require fewer American troops to accomplish our mission. I will make decisions on troop levels based on the progress we see on the ground and the advice of our military leaders -- not based on artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington,'' he said.
He also repeated his position that the war in which almost 2,200 Americans have been killed is being won.

"Not only can we win the war in Iraq -- we are winning the war in Iraq,'' he declared.
The 17-minute speech, Bush's first from the White House Oval Office since he announced the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, differed little from four speeches he has delivered over the past three weeks in the run-up to the Iraqi elections. But for this address, the White House asked for prime-time coverage from the major TV networks -- and got it, giving Bush a much broader audience to directly make his case.

The speech came amid continuing discord over the administration's war policy and a new uproar over disclosures that since 2002, Bush has authorized the National Security Agency to engage in domestic eavesdropping without search warrants or court orders.

Democrats in Congress have tied the war and the spying disclosures together as an administration pattern of operating in secrecy and not telling the truth. The spying revelation played a role in Friday's Senate vote to block extension of portions of the Patriot Act.

Bush, who has consistently tied the war in Iraq to the broader war against international terrorism, has struck back, trying to rebuild support for the war and warning that allowing any of the Patriot Act to lapse would endanger Americans.

In a brief televised appearance Saturday, he defended his order allowing domestic eavesdropping, and on Sunday, he again said pulling out of Iraq before victory would be a strategic blunder.
"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost, and not worth another dime or another day,'' he said, referring to the war's critics.

"I don't believe that. Our military commanders do not believe that. Our troops in the field, who bear the burden and make the sacrifices, do not believe that America has lost.'' It was Bush's fifth major address on Iraq in the past three weeks designed to set out his strategy for winning the war launched to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

The president also cautioned that the parliamentary elections for a national assembly that will create a new government with a four-year term won't immediately bring peace in Iraq.

"This election will not mean the end of violence. But it is the beginning of something new: constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East,'' he said again, citing his dream of transforming the Arab world into a center of democratic values that will no longer breed Islamic terrorism.

He said the vote, in which more than 10 million people from all of Iraq's ethnic and religious factions participated, "means that America has an ally of growing strength in the fight against terror.''

Bush also reiterated the admissions he has made in recent weeks that the Iraq war was based on faulty intelligence and that the conduct of the war has been marked by miscalculation. But, he said, those blunders don't mean withdrawal is the right course.

"Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,'' he conceded. "And as your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.''

He said fighting the insurgency "has been especially difficult in Iraq -- more difficult than we expected.''

Even before the president spoke, leading members of Congress said it is unclear if the United States can win in Iraq.

"The question is whether the United States can reduce the casualties, because that's what Americans care about, and that is all dictated by the ability of the Iraqi military and police to take over the responsibility,'' Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week.''
On NBC's "Meet the Press,'' Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said training Iraqis won't help if the new Iraqi government doesn't carry out promises to revise the country's new Constitution to assure the unhappy Sunni minority that it will have adequate protections.

U.S. withdrawals will occur next year "only if the political coming together is achieved in rewriting the Constitution," said Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Then I believe they've got a chance to defeat the insurgents and the terrorists.''

After Bush's speech, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who has endorsed a proposal to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq in about six months, said the remarks contained nothing new.

"President Bush persists in pursuing a flawed policy that has not made the American people safer nor made the Middle East more secure. It is time for a new direction in Iraq -- not more of the same,'' she said.

Another anti-war Democrat, Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, said Bush didn't answer key questions about the war.

"Does the president expect victory in five years? In 10 years or 20? How much money, how many American lives will it take to achieve this victory? Half a trillion dollars? A trillion? Five thousand American lives? Ten thousand? Are we going to maintain military bases in Iraq permanently?'' Lee asked.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said Bush's policy is succeeding.

"Any questions about the progress made in Iraq should have been answered by watching this week's historic elections. Democracy is spreading through Iraq,'' Hastert said.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said he was disappointed that Bush didn't use his Oval Office speech to address the new furor over domestic eavesdropping.

Kennedy said he wanted Bush to say "why he feels he's above the law. Whether its secret prisons, bending the rules on torture, or domestic spying without court orders, this administration has unnecessarily played fast and loose with law and constitutional protections.''

The president spoke as a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed that a strong majority of Americans oppose immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. The poll found 57 percent of those surveyed said the U.S. military should stay until Iraq is stabilized.

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