Bush Responds To War Critics, Cites Progress

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WASHINGTON – Trying to build support for his Iraq war strategy, President Bush acknowledged Wednesday that reconstruction has proceeded with “fits and starts” but asserted that economic progress is lifting hopes for a democratic future.


“In places like Mosul and Najaf, residents are seeing tangible progress in their lives,” Mr. Bush said. “They’re gaining a personal stake in a peaceful future and their confidence in Iraq’s democracy is growing. The progress in these cities is being replicated across much of Iraq.”


There’s still plenty of work to do in cities like Najaf and Mosul, he said.


“Like most of Iraq, the reconstruction in Najaf has proceeded with fits and starts since liberation,” Mr. Bush said. “It’s been uneven. Sustaining electric power remains a major challenge. … Security in Najaf has improved substantially; but threats remain. There are still kidnappings; and militias and armed gangs are exerting more influence than they should in a free society.”


Mr. Bush’s speech came amid new violence in Iraq. Gunmen killed three police officers in the northern city of Kirkuk and freed a wounded man who had been arrested for plotting to kill a judge in the Saddam Hussein trial. A day earlier, two suicide bombers detonated explosives inside Baghdad’s main police academy, killing at least 43 people and wounding more than 70.


Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat of Pennsylvania and a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said the military has told him it plans to ask for $100 billion more for the war next year. That’s in addition to the $50 billion that Congress is expected to approve for this year before adjourning, and the $200 billion that lawmakers already have given the president for Iraq since 2003.


Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said “it would be premature” to discuss next year’s budget, which the administration has not completed but will submit in February. Military commanders have told the administration the next $50 billion should last through Memorial Day.


“The president says the security situation on the ground is better. It is not,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat of California, said. “More of the same in Iraq is not making us safer.”


Mr. Murtha criticized the way the president and his administration have handled Iraq, and said Mr. Bush lacked credibility.


“It’s been poor planning from the start,” said Mr. Murtha, a Vietnam War veteran, who added that as far as he can tell, Mr. Bush’s plan is “stay the course and hope.”


Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush failed to provide a strategy for success or speak honestly about the failures in rebuilding Iraq and the challenges ahead. “Instead, he cherry-picked isolated examples of Iraq’s reconstruction from two cities that provide an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the situation on the ground for most Iraqis,” Mr. Reid said.


Mr. Bush’s speech, hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, was the second in a series of four to answer criticism and questions about the American presence more two and a half years after the war started. He spoke to a group of foreign policy experts, many of whom have been critical of his policies. They gave him a cool reception. Some in the audience interrupted to applaud when Mr. Bush said America would not run from Iraq, but most sat stoically during the entire speech.


Mr. Bush is shouldering the lowest job approval rating of his presidency, and the latest series of speeches amounts to a public relations campaign to respond to political pressure that has mounted as American deaths have eclipsed 2,100. He and other administration officials are working to shore up slumping public support for the war in the run-up to the December 15 vote in Iraq to create a democratically elected government that will run the country for the next four years.


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