Video: U.S. Hostage Taken In Iraq

Insurgents Said To Have Kidnapped A U.S. Security Consultant

(CBS/AP) 
Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, said he thinks the sudden increase is not an accident.

"There is some sort of policy to go back to kidnappings," he said. "The elections are coming and these groups want attention and publicity. That way their political statement will get a priority in the Western media."

Mr. Bush, speaking to reporters at the end of an Oval Office meeting with the director-general of the World Health Organization, would not comment on reports that the United States runs secret prisons abroad.

"I don't talk about secret programs," Mr. Bush said.

But, he said, the United States does not torture and will do everything in its legal power to protect Americans while abiding by U.S. law.

Human rights organizations and legal groups, both in the U.S. and abroad, have accused the United States of allowing a practice known as "rendition to torture," in which suspects are taken to countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia where harsh interrogation methods are used. The U.S. has denied that tactic, a denial Mr. Bush repeated Tuesday.

"We do not render to countries that torture," he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is traveling in Europe, has faced tough questions about whether the United States houses suspected terrorists in secret prisons that violate European legal and human rights guarantees. The general issue of U.S. treatment of detainees in the war on terror has been an irritant in relations with Europe and other parts of the world since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

It gained new immediacy last month with a Washington Post report claiming the U.S. ran prisons in Thailand, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, and claims by Human Rights Watch that it had tracked CIA flights into Eastern Europe.

Mr. Bush said the best way to make Iraq a peaceful society is to continue to spread democracy.

"There are terrorists there who will kill innocent people and behead people and kill children, terrorists who have got desires to hurt the American people," he said. "The more violent they get, the clearer the cause ought to be, that we're going to achieve victory in Iraq and that we'll bring these people to justice. We will hunt them down, along with our Iraqi friends, and at the same time spread democracy."