WASHINGTON, 20 March 2007 — With Democrats pushing for an end to the Iraq war now entering its fifth year, President Bush pleaded for more patience yesterday, saying success is possible but “will take months, not days or weeks.”
The war has stretched longer, with higher costs, than the White House ever predicted. On the fourth anniversary of the day Bush directed the invasion to begin, the president made a televised statement from the White House Roosevelt Room to defend continued US involvement. He said his plan to send 21,500 additional US troops to secure Baghdad and Iraq’s troubled Anbar province “will need more time to take effect.” Bush added: “There will be good days and bad days ahead as the security plan unfolds.”
Bush’s speech followed a weekend of anti-war protests around the United States and more suicide blasts in Iraq.
In his White House speech, Bush attempted to neutralize Democratic calls for a withdrawal of troops. Congress will vote Thursday to determine if they have the 218 votes needed in Congress to set timeline for US troop pullout. Democrats, put in power on Capitol Hill mainly because of anti-war public sentiment, are trying to use their power of the purse to force action. So far, Iraq’s leadership is struggling to meet the major benchmarks that it has pledged to the United States.
The impending House vote concerns a $124 billion spending bill, $95.5 billion of which is targeted for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of the other money is for unrelated domestic programs, which also has angered the White House. The legislation would provide funding for the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2007 but would essentially prompt the withdrawal of troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008.
Also yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice staunchly defended going to war in Iraq, but acknowledged the Bush administration should have sent more troops initially to quell the civil strife following the invasion.
Asked on CBS’s “The Early Show” to say what the Bush administration could have done better, she said that, early on, officials “might have looked to a more localized, more decentralized approach to reconstruction.”
“… And I do believe that the kind of counterinsurgency strategy which Gen. (David) Petraeus is now pursuing, in which we have enough forces to clear an area and hold it so that building and governance can emerge, is the best strategy. And that probably was not pursued in the very beginning,” she added.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a persistent critic of the war strategy but a supporter of the war itself, has repeatedly complained that not enough US troops were placed on the ground in the weeks and months following the March 2003 invasion.
Bush’s speech coincides with a poll that said fewer than one in five Iraqis has confidence in US-led coalition troops and they are evenly split on whether they have confidence in Iraq’s government.
Iraqis are growing increasingly pessimistic according to the survey gauging public opinion four years after the US-led invasion of their country. The British Broadcasting Corp., ABC News, USA Today and Germany’s ARD television commissioned the poll. Only 18 percent of Iraqis have confidence in US and coalition troops, and 86 percent are concerned that someone in their household will be a victim of violence.
