WASHINGTON, 9 September 2003 — President Bush, facing doubts about his handling of Iraq amid rising casualties, is asking Congress for $87 billion to fight terrorism and cautioning Americans that the struggle “will take time and require sacrifice.”
Bush’s money request — surpassing earlier unofficial estimates — would come on top of the $79 billion that Congress approved in April for the initial costs of the war and its aftermath and for worldwide efforts against terrorism.
Despite calls from Republicans and Democrats alike for more troops, Bush said the 130,000 US forces in Iraq were sufficient. But he urged other nations, even those that had opposed the war, to contribute troops and money.
The president addressed the nation Sunday night, his first speech on Iraq since May 1 when he stood on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major combat.
In the four months since, US casualties have risen steadily, to the point where more have died in the aftermath of the war than during the combat phase.
The attacks on American forces continued yesterday when an explosion struck a US patrol convoy near the center of Baghdad. Two soldiers were wounded, a military spokesman said.
Bush described Iraq in his 18-minute speech as the central battleground of the terrorism war and blamed the violence on Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign terrorists.
“We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today, so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities,” Bush said, four days before the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said yesterday the additional money the administration is badly needed.
If Iraq can be stabilized, “those costs will be won back over and over again,” she said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“What we are now seeing is a central battle on the war on terrorism and these terrorists know it. That why they are going to Iraq,” Rice said on CBS’ “The Early Show.”
“We don’t know the numbers in which they are going to Iraq, but that’s why they’re going,” she said. “They know that a stable and prosperous Iraq in the middle of a different kind of Middle East will be the death knell for the terrorism and for their cause, which is to undermine civilization and to undermine freedom.”
While the confrontation with Saddam made the president’s popularity skyrocket, public confidence in his handling of Iraq has dropped since the war, leveling off in the mid-50 percent area.
Heading into a campaign year hoping to unseat Bush, Democrats have been emboldened to criticize him on Iraq. Even some Republican allies have urged him to change course.
A fresh burst of Democratic criticism followed the speech.
“Now that the president has recognized that he has been going down the wrong path, this administration must begin the process of fully engaging our allies and sharing the burden of building a stable democracy in Iraq,” said Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., a White House hopeful.
Howard Dean, another Democratic candidate, yesterday accused Bush of going into Iraq “recklessly” and said “failure is not an option.”
Saying it’s critical that other nations get involved, Dean said on NBC that “we’re in trouble and we need the help of all of the people that the president insulted on the way into Iraq.”
Questions have been raised by the administration’s failure to find any of Saddam’s illegal weapons or the ousted Iraqi leader himself. Rice said yesterday she remained confident that Saddam would be found.
Bush made just one reference in his speech to weapons of mass destruction -- a sharp contrast to his repeated assertions about them before the war.
Bush said Iraq and the Middle East are critical to winning the global war on terror.
Describing Iraq as the central front in the war against terror, he said the “enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there, and there they must be defeated.”
“This will take time and require sacrifice,” he said. “Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure.”
While saying the United States has enough troops in Iraq, Bush said American commanders have requested a multinational division to serve alongside similar units led by Britain and Poland.
