Bush To Face Scrutiny After Iraq Visit

President Bush arrived in Australia Tuesday night for the Pacific Rim leaders' summit after suggesting on a surprise visit to Iraq that U.S. troop strength could be reduced if security continues to improve.

Mr. Bush landed in Sydney after an unscheduled detour to Iraq's Anbar province, a region once rife with insurgents. He arrived ahead of a summit of 21 Asia-Pacific countries where the debate over the war seemed sure to follow him.

"We're having good success on the ground from a security perspective," in an interview.

Mr. Bush said his top advisers in Iraq told him "if we continue to have that kind of success … then we can do the same job with fewer troops."

The president said he came to Anbar province "because you're seeing reconciliation. You're seeing local folks getting sick and tired of al Qaeda and helping coalition forces deal a blow to al Qaeda, which by the way makes this country more secure."

Couric traveled this week with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, to Fallujah in Anbar province, once a stronghold of the insurgency, and reports the troop surge appears to have helped quell much of the violence there.

Mr. Bush's trip was a dramatic move to steal the thunder from the Democratic Congress as it returns to Washington with fresh hopes of ending the unpopular war, now in its fifth year. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will testify before lawmakers next week, and then Mr. Bush will announce how he intends to proceed in Iraq.

The president told reporters aboard Air Force One that his strategy sessions with U.S. and Iraqi leaders and chats about morale with soldiers and Marines at an air base in western Iraq left him hopeful that positive change is starting in the 4-year-old conflict.

The question, he said, is, "Will it last?"

Mr. Bush is nearing a decision on how long to maintain the current U.S. troop buildup. He sent 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq to enhance security in Baghdad and Anbar Province. Despite military successes, political progress - especially at the national level - is lagging and Democrats and some prominent Republicans want troops called home.

"How many troops does it take to protect us?" Mr. Bush asked. "What does it take to have this Iraqi democracy succeed?"

Debate over the Iraq war was certain to surface at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Mr. Bush begins summit talks Wednesday, meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Howard is a staunch Iraq war ally, reported CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer, but he faces a public increasingly sour about the Australian troop presence in Iraq.

He also faces an aggressive election challenge from opposition leader Kevin Rudd, and Rudd's desire to pull Australian troops out of Iraq will surely be broached in the talks.

Mr. Bush also is scheduled to meet with leaders from Japan, China, Russia and South Korea. Some have dubbed this year's APEC the "China summit," a reference to Beijing's rising influence.

"Is this a China summit? The answer is absolutely not," Mr. Bush said.

The presidential entourage had barely climbed aboard Air Force One, leaving dusty desert footprints on its blue carpet, when Mr. Bush invited reporters to a conference room for a 30-minute chat. He fiddled with a paper clip as he talked about his day at Al-Asad Air Base, a Saddam Hussein-era airfield now home to 10,000 U.S. troops, who down bottle after bottle of water in sweltering 100-plus degree heat.

It was Mr. Bush's third surprise trip to Iraq. The first two were to Baghdad.

This time he landed in the Iraqi desert, more than 100 miles west of the capital, to get on-the-ground briefings from advisers, including Petraeus and Crocker.

"General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have said that if the security situation continues to improve the way it has, we may be able to achieve the same objectives with fewer troops," Mr. Bush said.

He emphasized the word "if." And he didn't say how many troops could be withdrawn, or when.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden, who planned to visit Iraq on Tuesday, said that if Mr. Bush was considering simply reducing troops below the pre-surge level of 130,000, "that's not withdrawal."

"The withdrawal would be getting us out of the middle of that civil war," Biden said on CBS' The Early Show. "There is virtually no political progress being made ... I hope everyone levels with the American people. This is a civil war and we shouldn't be in the midst of it."

Mr. Bush has refrained from thinking aloud about troop deployments. The president said security improvements in Anbar, where local sheiks have joined with U.S. forces against al Qaeda, have given him confidence to "speculate on the hypothetical" - something he repeatedly refuses to do in answering reporters' questions.

Mr. Bush said he quizzed the troops - who cheered him and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with shouts of "Hooh-rah!" - about morale. He said some soldiers and Marines complained that rotations were tough on their families, but added, "I wasn't alarmed by what I heard."

Asked if the discussions would affect his decision about troop levels, Mr. Bush turned resolute.

"The main factor that will affect my decision on troop levels is, can we succeed? What does it take to succeed?" Mr. Bush said, chopping the table with the side of his hand. "Because failure would lead to harm to America, is what I believe. As a matter of fact, I'm certain of it."

The president described his meeting at the base with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as "comfortable." He said the underlying question about the Iraqi government was: "Will this government go after killers?"

Meeting with al-Maliki, a Shiite, in the heart of mostly Sunni Anbar province was intended to show the administration's war critics that the beleaguered Iraqi leader is capable of reaching out to Sunnis, who ran the country for years under Saddam.