IHT : Bush declares that 'free Iraq' is within reach

Bush declares that 'free Iraq' is within reach

By Jim Rutenberg, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mark Mazzetti | August 22, 2007

KANSAS CITY, Missouri: President George W. Bush delivered a rousing defense of his Iraq policy on Wednesday, telling a group of veterans that "a free Iraq" is within reach and warning that if Americans succumbed to "the allure of retreat," they will witness death and suffering of the sort not seen since the Vietnam War.

"Then as now, people argued that the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end," Bush declared in a 45-minute speech before a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention here. He added, "The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be."

In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.

The speech was the beginning of an intense White House initiative to shape the debate on Capitol Hill in September, when the president's troop buildup will undergo a re-evaluation. It came amid rising concerns in Washington over the performance of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, who has made little progress toward bridging the sectarian divide in his country.

On Thursday, the administration is planning to make public parts of a sober new report by American intelligence agencies expressing deep doubts that the Maliki government can overcome sectarian differences. Government officials who have seen the report say it gives a bleak outlook on the chances Maliki can meet milestones intended to promote unity in Iraq.

On Wednesday, as a second Democratic senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, called for Maliki to quit, he lashed out at American lawmakers who have questioned his competence. Bush — who on Tuesday confessed to "a certain level of frustration" with the Iraqi government — responded by using Wednesday's speech to try to shore up Maliki. "Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man with a difficult job," he said, "and I support him."

All this month, members of Congress have been visiting Iraq to make their own assessments of the troop buildup and Maliki. While Republicans and even some Democrats say they are seeing military gains, Democratic leaders and party strategists, citing the lack of political progress, vowed Wednesday to renew their efforts to force an end to the war.

Bush, in turn, vowed to resist them. "We stand with the Iraqis at this difficult hour," he said.

As the battle lines are drawn, a new advertising war is beginning to heat up, focusing on lawmakers, especially Republicans, who face tough re-election campaigns. On Wednesday, a new interest group, Freedom's Watch, led by allies of the Bush administration — including Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate who ranks sixth on Forbes Magazine's lists of the world's billionaires — began a monthlong, $15 million campaign intended to support the president's policy.

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to Bush and a member of the group's board, said the ads would run in 20 states, in more than five dozen congressional districts. "Anybody who is considering switching their vote is somebody we care about," he said.

Presidential candidates are also staking out their positions, aware that the debate in Congress next month will help frame Americans' views as they decide who will succeed Bush. Indeed, the president was just one of several elected officials who spoke before the Veterans of Foreign Wars this week. Two top Democratic contenders — Senator Clinton and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois — have appeared, as has Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

Military audiences are generally safe for Bush and Wednesday's crowd came through with repeated bursts of applause. But the views expressed by the former soldiers in interviews here were hardly uniform. One, Charles Muckleston, a 77-year-old former army sergeant from Manchester, New Jersey, who fought in Korea, said he did not bother to go to the hall to hear Bush. "It didn't seem worthwhile," he said. But Todd Struwe, 44, who served on the Korean Peninsula, said Bush's address was "the best one we've heard so far from all of the candidates."

In the speech, Bush sought to paint the conflict in Iraq in the broader context of American involvement in Asia. In one fell swoop, the president likened the Iraq war to earlier conflicts in Japan and Korea — which produced democratic allies of the United States — as well as to the war in Vietnam, asserting that the American pullout there 32 years ago led to tens of thousands of deaths in that country and Cambodia.

"The question now before us," he said, referring to Japan and Korea, "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?"

And, in a passage that set off a bitter debate even before the speech's end, Bush suggested a quick pullout from Iraq could bring the kind of carnage that drenched Southeast Asia three decades ago. "In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution," Bush said. "In Vietnam, former allies of the United States, and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea."

With his comments Bush was doing something few major politicians of either party have done in a generation: rearguing a conflict that ended more than three decades ago but has remained an emotional touch point.

Democrats, not surprisingly, rejected the comparison, including Senator John Kerry, the Vietnam War veteran who ran unsuccessfully against Bush in 2004. "Invoking the tragedy of Vietnam to defend the failed policy in Iraq is as irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars," Kerry said.

At the same time, he was giving rare, political voice to those — many of whom were in the hall — who believe the American pullout was a mistake in spite of the popular, baby-boomer perception that America should have never gone there in the first place.

"Amen," said Bob McKay, 63, who served in the army during the Vietnam War. "That's what I fear most: We're going to pull another Vietnam." But two World War II veterans, John Rocca and Anthony Cellucci, said they had qualms about Bush's speech. They said they agreed with Obama's call for United States troops to refocus their efforts to find Osama bin Laden and his deputies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I don't think we belong over there," Cellucci said. "Bring the troops home." He added, "You fight a war, you fight it and get it over with."

As the end of the congressional recess draws closer, the debate over whether to bring troops home or allow the current policy to continue will only intensify. The new intelligence assessment, called "Prospects for Iraq's Stability," is likely to play an important role in that debate and will be used both by the White House and its opponents to bolster competing positions.

Officials said the assessment concluded that there was a lack of political alternatives to Maliki and that the prime minister retained support among Shiite groups in part because putting together a new government would be arduous. Officials in Washington and Baghdad for months have said that any military gains will be ephemeral if Iraqi politicians are not able to bridge sectarian divides.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report will not be issued until Thursday, and spokesmen for both the White House and the director of national intelligence declined to comment. "The report says that there's been little political progress to date, and it's very gloomy on the chances for political progress in the future," said one congressional official with knowledge of its contents.

The new report also concludes that the American military has had success in recent months in tamping down sectarian violence in the country, according to officials who have read it.

Jim Rutenberg reported from Kansas City, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mark Mazzetti from Washington. Damien Cave contributed from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.