Bush urges patience, long view on Iraq war

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- President Bush appealed last night to the American people to show patience and resolve as US forces battle a relentless and brutal insurgency in Iraq, calling the mission ''the latest battlefield" in a broader war against terror that he said is necessary to prevent new attacks against the United States.

In an address filled with references to September 11 and Osama bin Laden, Bush repeatedly linked the increasingly unpopular Iraq war with the 2001 attacks that galvanized the country against Al Qaeda and terrorism. While the administration has often acknowledged that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, Bush said last night that foreign terrorists are now ''converging on Iraq to fight the advance of peace and freedom."

''The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11 . . . and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden," Bush told some 750 soldiers at Fort Bragg, picked by their officers to hear their commander in chief. ''This will not happen on my watch."

Insurgents ''are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11, 2001," Bush added. But ''the American people do not falter under threat, and we will not allow our future to be determined by car bombers and assassins," the president said on the first anniversary of the formal transfer of sovereignty.

Bush's somber address -- his third prime-time speech on Iraq -- offered the most detailed explanation yet of the steps the United States is taking to help Iraqis run their own security and political system. However, the president did not disclose any significant new programs or initiatives, focusing instead on the range of US efforts to improve training of Iraqi forces and to conduct joint US-Iraqi operations.

Bush said it would be a serious mistake to set a timetable for withdrawal of the nearly 140,000 US troops in Iraq, but he also said he did not intend to increase the number of US forces there, which ''would suggest that we intend to stay forever -- when we are in fact working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave."

The speech lacked the overt optimism the president displayed when he rallied troops under a ''Mission Accomplished" banner in May 2003, six weeks after an American-led force invaded Iraq and quickly crushed the Hussein regime. This time, the president acknowledged the insurgent violence that has killed more than 1,740 US soldiers and wounded more than 12,000, and indicated he had heard the voices of those who wondered whether the United States was getting bogged down in a lengthy, bloody conflict.

''Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question, 'Is the sacrifice worth it?' It is worth it, and it is vital to the future security of our country," Bush told the audience at Fort Bragg, which has 9,300 troops deployed in Iraq. Fort Bragg and nearby Pope Air Force Base have lost 89 service members in Iraq and Afghanistan.

''I recognize that Americans want our troops to come home as quickly as possible. So do I. We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed -- and not a day longer," Bush said.

Dan Bartlett, a chief aide to Bush, acknowledged that there was no connection between Hussein and September 11, but said the comparison was fair because they were both part of a threat from terrorists nurtured in the Middle East.

''You can't delink the two, because foreign policy had to change after our nation was attacked," Bartlett said. ''Sixty years of tolerance and excuse-making by Western nations had to change, and it is changing."

Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster, criticized Bush for what Schoen said was a continuing effort to pump up what he called a discredited connection between the Iraq war and September 11.

''This is the only card they have to play," Schoen said. ''They really don't have an argument" to justify the war, he said.

Bush has been under increasing pressure from Capitol Hill and the public to explain the reality of the situation in Iraq and lay out an exit strategy. Polls show support for both the president and the war eroding steadily; a USA Today/Gallup survey released yesterday had the president's approval rating at an all-time low of 45 percent, with 61 percent of those polled saying Bush had no clear plan for the mission in Iraq.

More startling was a poll published yesterday of military-friendly North Carolina residents: just 42 percent of those surveyed said the war, on balance, was a good idea, with 49 percent saying that it was not worth it. Further, the poll, conducted for the Raleigh News & Observer, showed that a plurality of 46 percent said the Iraq war had made the United States less safe, with 44 percent saying the war has made Americans safer.

But polls also show Americans oppose the idea of a speedy withdrawal from Iraq, fearing a massive civil war in the troubled nation. A Washington Post poll released yesterday showed 58 percent of Americans think US troops should keep military forces in Iraq until it is stabilized, and 55 percent think the task will take a few years or more than five years.

Members of Congress, including a growing number who voted in 2002 to authorize force in Iraq, have begun demanding an exit strategy, citing constituent unhappiness with the escalating deaths and monetary cost of the war.

Bush yesterday met privately with family members of North Carolina service people killed in Iraq, and in his speech, the president acknowledged that ''the work in Iraq is difficult and dangerous." But the president stuck to his guns, telling Americans he would not give in to ''men with blind hatred and armed lethal weapons who are capable of any atrocity."

While Iraq is still dangerous, Bush said, ''progress has been made," including national elections in January, work toward a new democratic constitution, and the rebuilding of infrastructure. He also described military and political actions underway to help move Iraq toward independence.

US troops are teaming up with Iraqi units to give the Iraqis a sense of ''how the most professional armed forces in the world operate in combat," Bush said. Transition teams have been embedded with Iraqi forces -- living with them, working with them and fighting with them -- so they can advise their Iraqi colleagues.

US forces are also working with the Iraqi ministries of Defense and the Interior to improve antiterrorist efforts, Bush said.

Rick Barton, codirector of the post-conflict reconstruction program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Bush had fallen into what he called a common trap of developing a ''list of things to do instead of a strategy" to win the war and the peace in Iraq.

With the war becoming longer and bloodier than many Americans anticipated, Bush needs to do more than insist on continuing the current strategy there, Barton said. ''It's hard to [say] that they are moving in a better direction right now," he said. ''You've got a losing game."