WASHINGTON, 25 June 2005 — President George W. Bush assured Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari yesterday “there are not going to be any timetables” for withdrawal of American forces.
“This is not the time to fall back,” Jaafari concurred at a joint news conference at the White House.
Fielding questions hours after the latest attack on a US military convoy left at least six American soldiers dead, Bush conceded that it bothers Americans to see scenes of carnage on television.
Speaking of the insurgents, he said, “There’s no question there’s an enemy that still wants to shake our will and get us to leave... They try to kill and they do kill innocent Iraqi people, women and children because they know that the carnage that they reap will be on TV and they know that it bothers people to see death.
“And it does. It bothers me. It bothers American citizens. It bothers Iraqis,” Bush said.
Bush said setting a timetable for withdrawal of the American forces would only prompt the insurgents to “wait us out.”
He said he would stay the course in Iraq despite public opinion polls showing dwindling support for his policy. He indicated his awareness of his domestic critics when a reporter began asking a question about whether he was concerned about a “slump” in his support.
“Quagmire?” the president asked, employing a word that some Democrats in Congress have begun to use to describe the military presence in Iraq one year after the transfer of sovereignty.
Jaafari seemed to recognize the domestic pressure on the president. “You have given us more than money,” said Jaafari, who visited wounded American troops on Thursday night at a military hospital in the capital. “You have given us your sons, your children, that were killed beside our own children in Iraq... This is more precious than any other support we have received.”
More than 1,700 American troops have died in Iraq, the majority of them since the end of hostilities aimed at toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. There have been 479 car bombings in Iraq since the handover of sovereignty on June 28, 2004.
