US President George W. Bush, scrambling to show he still backs embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, offered him a fresh endorsement, calling him "a good guy, good man with a difficult job."
"I support him," Bush said on Wednesday, a day after he acknowledged frustration with the Iraqi leader's inability to bridge political divisions in his country. "It's not up to the politicians in Washington to say whether he will remain in his position. It is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship."
validation
Bush's validation of al-Maliki, inserted at the last minute into his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) convention on Wednesday, stole the spotlight from Bush's attempt to buttress support for the war by likening today's fight against extremism to past conflicts in Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
Bush's speech -- and another one like it on Tuesday -- are intended to set the stage for a crucial report next month on the progress of the fighting and steps toward political reconciliation in Iraq. Democrats in the US Congress and some Republicans are pressing to start the withdrawal of US forces.
Yesterday, US intelligence agencies was to issue a new assessment expressing doubt that al-Maliki's government can overcome sectarian divisions or meet benchmarks toward achieving political unity, the New York Times reported on its Web site Wednesday night. The report cited unidentified officials.
Arguing that the buildup of US forces was showing results, Bush said, "Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: `Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?'"
Comparing Iraq with earlier wars, Bush said, "The question now before us comes down to this: `Will today's generation of Americans resist the deceptive allure of retreat and do in the Middle East what veterans in this room did in Asia?'"
Bush had appeared on Tuesday to be distancing himself from the Iraqi leader when he said at a North American summit in Canada: "Clearly, the Iraqi government's got to do more."
DENIAL
The White House denied Bush was backing away from al-Maliki, but it was lukewarm validation compared with Bush calling al-Maliki "the right guy for Iraq" last November in Jordan.
Al-Maliki, on a trip to Syria, sharply rejected the US criticism. He said no one has the right to impose timetables on his elected government, and that Iraq can "find friends elsewhere."
Without naming any US official, al-Maliki said some criticism of him and his government in recent days had been "discourteous."
On Monday, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, urged Iraq's parliament to oust al-Maliki and replace his government with a more unifying one.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 2008 Democratic presidential front-runner, echoed Levin's call on Wednesday. Clinton said Iraqis should find a "less divisive and more unifying figure."
Iraq is so divided along sectarian and ethnic lines, however, that there is doubt as to whether any other politician could do a better job.
On Tuesday, US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said progress on national issues had been "extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned."
Slow political progress in Iraq is at the heart of the US military troop buildup Bush announced in January. The US president justified sending more troops to increase security and give Iraqi political leaders the breathing space to reconcile.
run-up
Bush's speech was the first of two speeches on Iraq in the run-up to the Sept. 15 report. Next Tuesday, Bush plans to discuss the war in the context of its implications for the broader Middle East at the annual American Legion convention in Reno, Nevada.
"Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this," Bush told an estimated 5,800 VFW veterans.
He cited some political progress, saying the Iraqi government has passed about 60 pieces of legislation, and that while it has not passed a law to share oil revenues among the Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis, revenues are being disbursed to the provinces. On the military front, Bush boasted that since the beginning of the year, US troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al-Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month.
Bush, who has rejected Iraq-Vietnam comparisons in the past, linked the US pullout back then to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Foreign policy analysts took issue with Bush.
"The president emphasized the violence in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. But this happened because the United States left too late, not too early," said Steven Simon, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It was the expansion of the war that opened the door to [Khmer Rouge leader] Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay, the worse it gets."
Bush said the history of US conflicts in Asia have shown that critics of the day are often wrong and that withdrawing from war should never be done for short-term gain.
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