Bush cites strides in Iraq, credits the increase in troops
But warns that progress made is also reversible
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio - President Bush said yesterday that the yearlong increased US troop deployment in Iraq had allowed the country to "restart political and economic life" and take on a greater role in its own reconstruction while building a modern democracy on "the rubble of three decades of tyranny."
But he made clear his readiness to delay the withdrawal of US forces, saying that as he considered his next steps, he would remember that "the progress in Iraq is real, it's substantive, but it is reversible."
And in an apparent jab at political critics who he said have refused to acknowledge the achievements he sees, the president said, "Now that political progress is picking up, they're looking for a new reason" to call for retreat.
Accusing some members of Congress of hectoring Iraqi leaders, he said: "They claim that our strategic interest is elsewhere, and that if we would just get out of Iraq, we could focus on the battles that really matter. . . . If America's strategic interests are not in Iraq, then where are they?"
The speech was Bush's third over the past three weeks intended to present a broad look at US policy in Iraq, the course of the war, and the conditions in the country five years after the United States invaded to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein.
Bush spoke to about 1,000 people, many of them Air Force personnel, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, on the outskirts of Dayton. He stood between an F-86 of Korean War vintage and a current fighter jet, the F-22, with a Predator drone displayed from the ceiling of the museum hangar and a B-52's menacing presence to the side.
Critics challenged his assessment, contending that it was overly rosy and failed to present a course that would lead to withdrawal.
Steven A. Cook, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a telephone interview that although the examples of progress Bush cited were accurate, the new Iraqi laws the president cited either fall short or there are loopholes.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said in a written statement that Bush failed to give the American people a clear indication that a plan for success was any closer now than in the past five years.
"The president asserts that real progress has been made in Iraq, but if that were truly the case, then our troops would be coming home soon," Reid said.
In his 42-minute speech, Bush said any Iraqi failure to make quick political progress was not an example of foot-dragging - a reference, an aide said, to criticism by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon - but rather a reflection of the revolutionary nature of the challenge.
"This progress isn't glamorous, but it is important," Bush said.
He presented security issues, the economy, and political conditions as woven together, and he said he would take all those elements into consideration when the top commander in Iraq, Army General David H. Petreaus, and US ambassador Ryan Crocker come to Washington to report to Congress the week after next on the US course in coming months.
Bush cited the Iraqi security forces' response to new violence in Basra, a largely Shi'ite city in southeastern Iraq near the border with Iran, as evidence that the US supported government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was willing to take on insurgents who have received arms and training and funding from Iran.
