Bush Says Iraq Is 'Better Than You Probably Think'

President Defends Postwar Policy

Thursday, October 9, 2003

(3:24 PM ET)

By Dana Milbank

Washington Post Staff Writer

President Bush touts his Iraq policy to Air National Guardsmen and their families at Pease Air National Guard Base in Porstmouth, N.H., as part of a concerted White House effort to highlight progress in Iraq. (Jason Reed - Reuters)

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- WP
President Bush told Americans today that the situation in Iraq is "a lot better than you probably think," as he sought to rally the flagging support for the U.S. occupation.

In twin speeches here in New Hampshire, the president kicked off an effort to revive determination to remain in Iraq, saying "Americans are not the running kind."

Bush's speech fell on one of the more violent days in Iraq; an attack on a police station killed eight, a Spanish diplomat was slain and another American soldier was killed in an attack on a convoy. Bush did not directly acknowledge those setbacks, but implicitly acknowledged the difficulties and their toll on his own standing.

"When you become the president, you cannot predict all the challenges that will come, but you do know the principles that you bring to the office, and they should not change with time or with polls," Bush said. "The challenges we face today cannot be met with timid actions or bitter words; our challenges will be overcome with optimism and resolve and confidence in the ideals of America."

Bush's largely identical speeches in New Hampshire today, delivered to National Guardsmen and reservists in Portsmouth and a business audience here, received substantial advanced billing as the White House has worked to change the focus from violence in Iraq, the lack of international help, the absence of proscribed weapons and the controversy over the administration's leak of the identity of a CIA agent married to a critic of Bush's Iraq policy. In practice, Bush used many of the same lines he commonly uses in the stump speech he gives at fundraisers, but with a more somber tone.

The speeches furthered the administration's shift in emphasis from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction to his desire for such weapons and the general evil he represented.

"Who can possibly think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power?" Bush said. "Surely not the dissidents, who would be in his prisons or end up in mass graves. Surely not the men and women who would fill Saddam's torture chambers, or the women in his rape rooms. Surely not the victims he murdered with poison gas. Surely not anyone who cares about human rights and democracy and stability in the Middle East. There's only one decent and humane reaction to the fall of Saddam Hussein: Good riddance."

Bush's "good riddance" phrasing echoed his speech to the United Nations almost two years ago, speaking of a different enemy, the Taliban in Afghanistan. "When that regime is gone, the people of Afghanistan will say with the rest of the world, 'good riddance,'" he said then.
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Dan