One day before Iraq's historic parliamentary elections, US President George W. Bush on Wednesday defended his decision to invade that country and reserved the right to preemptive war in the future.
"In an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," he said in a speech aimed at shoring up flagging US support for the conflict.
However, he took the blame for going to war in Iraq over faulty intelligence but said he was right to topple former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and urged Americans to be patient as Iraqis vote.
"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq, and I am also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities and we're doing just that," he said.
But he said, "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision" because he was deemed a threat and that regardless, "We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator."
Bush, who embraced preemptive war as US strategy after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, did not name any potential targets, but said the Iraq vote would put pressure on the governments of Iran and Syria.
"We are living through a watershed moment in the story of freedom," he said. Iraq "will be a model for the Middle East. Freedom in Iraq will inspire reformers from Damascus to Tehran."
Speaking to an invited audience of scholars, members of Congress and diplomats at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan forum for the study of world affairs. Washington, Bush stood firm in resisting calls, largely from Democrats, for a timetable for withdrawal.
Bush's job approval ratings have sunk sharply since his reelection last year because of high gas prices, worries about the economy and growing concerns about Iraq as the US death toll has risen beyond 2,140 soldiers.
In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Wednesday, 60 percent of respondents said they favored a gradual reduction of US troops from Iraq, up 4 percentage points from last month.
In what some political analysts have perceived to be a move by Bush to talk more frankly on the US difficulties in Iraq, Bush also admitted to "tactical mistakes" in an interview with Fox News.
"No question we made some, I would call them, tactical mistakes," he told Fox.
Bush said in his speech that Sunni Arabs, who have fueled the bloody insurgency, were increasingly abandoning violence to take part in their Iraq's politics. He also predicted they would turn out in large numbers yesterday.
Non-Iraqi extremists and Saddam loyalists "lack popular support, and over time, they can be marginalized and defeated by the security forces of a free Iraq," Bush said.
He also warned that violence would continue even after the vote, and laid out how to measure progress towards the day when the US can bring home its troops.
Bush said victory will have been achieved when extremists and Saddam loyalists are no longer a threat to Iraq's democracy, when Iraqi security forces are self-sufficient and when Iraq is not a "safe haven" for terrorists.
"These objectives, not timetables set by politicians in Washington, will drive our force levels in Iraq," Bush said. "We cannot -- and will not -- leave Iraq until victory is achieved."
He acknowledged that the war had sharply divided the US and that intelligence about Saddam's alleged weapons programs had turned out to be false.
But he sharply rebuked "irresponsible" charges that he had deliberately misled the country.
"These charges are pure politics. They hurt the morale of our troops," he declared, saying that even countries which opposed the war agreed that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.
But US media have quoted French and German intelligence officials in recent weeks as saying that they repeatedly warned Washington that crucial parts of its case for war were flawed or outright false.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese