07 July 2006
Bush Says U.S. Will Achieve Objectives in Iraq
President rejects calls for withdrawal timetable
Washington – President Bush said the United States will achieve its objective of ensuring that Iraq is a free country, able to govern, defend and sustain itself, but only if it rejects calls to establish artificial timetables for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
“You can't win a war if you have an artificial timetable for withdrawal. You know, you can't have people making troop decisions based upon political considerations. It just won't work,” Bush told reporters during a July 7 press conference in Chicago.
He said a timetable and early withdrawal simply would confirm al-Qaida’s belief that the United States does not have the stomach for the fight or the perseverance to support the Iraqi people. He said General George Casey, who commands the multinational forces in Baghdad, Iraq, would make determinations of troop levels.
Bush said the war effort is difficult because of the enemy’s strategy of killing innocent people to achieve its goals. He said terrorist attacks create sensational television images, while stories of increased power generation, new schools, new hospitals, refurbished infrastructure and the growth of small businesses go unreported.
The terrorists’ objectives, the president said, “is to drive us out of Iraq so they can have safe haven from which to launch attacks against modern Muslim nations, so they can spread their ideology of hate.”
He said Iraq is too important to long-term peace and to U.S. security to allow this to happen. “[A] free Iraq is an essential part of changing the conditions which cause the terrorist to be able to recruit killers in the first place,” he said.
Bush said that freedom is a universal desire “etched in the soul of every person on the face of the Earth … and I know that freedom has got the capacity to change regions of the world for the better.”
He expressed confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, who “represents the will of 12 million who went to the polls,” citing him as a man who sets goals and understands what needs to be done.
A transcript of the press conference is available on the White House Web site.
For more information, see Iraq Update.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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