Bush Hopeful As War Enters Year Four
President Bush on Monday cited progress in stabilizing an insurgent stronghold in northern Iraq, saying he has "confidence in our strategy" and contending that critics should look beyond the images of violence to see clear signs of progress.
Mr. Bush tried a new tactic to boost sagging support for the war, relating to his audience in Cleveland a lengthy story about a campaign to rid the northern city of Tal Afar of terrorism against civilians. Success there "gives reason for hope for a free Iraq," he said.
Mr. Bush described how the insurgents who had been using murder and intimidation to run roughshod over the city have been killed or captured by Iraqi forces and coalition troops working together.
The president's detailed description of the campaign — and the eventual success story — was meant to underscore another point the White House is trying to make: Evidence of progress is more difficult to capture in media sound bites than daily bombings and deaths.
"In the face of continued reports about killings and reprisals, I understand how some Americans have had their confidence shaken," Mr. Bush told the City Club of Cleveland. "Others look at the violence they see each night on their television screens and they wonder how I can remain so optimistic about the prospects of success in Iraq. They wonder what I see that they don't."
Mr. Bush said Tal Afar, a city of more than 200,000 near the Syrian border, was a strategic location for al Qaeda to recruit terrorists to come into the country and fight Iraq's legitimate government.
U.S. forces went into Tal Afar in September 2004 to clean out insurgent strongholds, but the insurgents returned after the Americans left. U.S. commanders said the insurgents were murdering and torturing civilians and kidnapping youth and turning them into terrorists.
The collapse of the first Tal Afar effort was an example of a broader problem the U.S. military has had throughout the three years in Iraq: They would "clean out" a town or city, then leave, and the insurgents would return because the Iraqis were unable to hold the city or town on their own. Now, the U.S. presence in such areas is stronger and Iraqi forces have a better chance to hold the area.
CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that while Tal Afar is far from completely secure, there are only about a quarter as many insurgent attacks there now than there were at this time one year ago.
The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was sent back in a year after the first Tal Afar campaign, along with some Iraqi soldiers, to clean it out again and apparently was more successful.
"The strategy that worked so well in Tal Afar did not emerge overnight," Mr. Bush said. "It took time to understand and adjust to the brutality of the enemy in Iraq.
"I wish I could tell you that the progress made in Tal Afar is the same in every part of Iraq. It is not," he said.
Axelrod reports that the president pointed to Tal Afar as a model for how he intends to secure the rest of Iraq, with the "clear, hold and build" strategy — clear out the terrorists, hold the city with Iraqi forces and build its economy and government.
"The example of Tal Afar gives me confidence in our strategy," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush was marking this week's third anniversary of the war by making speeches aimed at boosting support for his mission in Iraq, which has drawn increasing public skepticism at home, according to various polls.
Seven in 10 Americans in the latest CBS News poll say Iraq is now in a civil war, and just half expect the U.S. effort will be successful.
"A lot of these Americans who are moving away from the President on the war have held with them for a long time and they're changing because they are disillusioned that we are not winning the war," said CBS News Political Analyst Craig Crawford.
Democrats painted a far more pessimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than the president.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Joe Biden, the lead Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blamed "the dangerous incompetence of this administration" for an "increasingly dismal" outcome, thus far, in Iraq.
Biden, D-Del., said Iraq currently is in what he called a low-grade civil war and may be on the brink of a full-blown civil war when militias fully engage in the violence.
He urged the president to personally fly to other countries to ask foreign leaders to step up so the international community as a whole, and not just the United States, can pressure Iraqi leaders to form a unity government.
Mr. Bush "has to take a political risk," Biden said.
Also in Cleveland, Mr. Bush said his warrantless wiretaps are constitutional and necessary so he's "going to keep doing it," defending the domestic spying program that he said has created quite a "kerfuffle."
The president said after Sept. 11 that he asked security officials if they needed new means of protecting the country and the head of the National Security Agency told him the standard surveillance system was "slow and cumbersome."
Mr. Bush also said that he's willing to use military force to protect Israel from Iran.
"We will use military might to protect our ally Israel," he said, but added that his goal is to use diplomacy.
In Cleveland, as he has in several appearances in recent months, Mr. Bush answered questions from the audience.
Right off the bat, he was challenged on his Christian viewpoint and whether he sees terrorism as a sign of the Apocalypse (he said he never thought of it that way) and how he restores confidence in U.S. leadership after the reasons he gave for going to war with Iraq later proved false.
"Like you, I mean, I asked that very same question: Where'd we go wrong on intelligence?" Mr. Bush said. He said he is working to improve intelligence gathering because "the credibility of our country is essential."
But Mr. Bush also got his share of softballs, too. He was invited back for the Cleveland Hungarian Revolution 50th Anniversary and was complimented on his vision for a nuclear treaty with India and for his "very enlightening" comments about Iraq.