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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a