WASHINGTON, April 12: President George W. Bush has said the war in Iraq would end when US commanders in the Persian Gulf said coalition forces have achieved their objective.
In his weekly radio address on Saturday and while talking to reporters at a Washington hospital where he had gone to meet soldiers injured in the war, Mr Bush also declared that the Saddam regime was passing into history as “the world watched.”
Ending speculations about when he would declare an end to hostilities now that the White House has declared victory in the war, Mr Bush said Gen Tommy Franks, the commander leading the coalition forces in Iraq, would have final say as to when hostilities were over.
“And when Tommy says we’ve achieved our objective, that’s when we’ve achieved our objective,” Mr Bush told reporters.
The US officials said the signs that the Saddam government had collapsed appeared earlier this week when the Iraqi leaders began to leave Baghdad to avoid being captured by the advancing US forces.
And after the fall of Baghdad three days ago, US media started speculating that President Bush was expected to announce a formal end to the war in his weekly address to the nation on Saturday.
But Mr Bush silenced all speculations by saying that it was the commanders in the field, and not the White House, who would decide when to end the war.
Mr Bush said it should be no surprise to the world that the Iraqis were welcoming the coalition troops. “Iraqis, like all people, resent oppression and welcome their own freedom,” he added.
The US president who is spending the weekend at Camp David, used his radio address to recap the week’s events in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq a day after the White House and Pentagon declared that the Saddam regime had dismantled.
“As people throughout Iraq celebrate the arrival of freedom, America celebrates with them. We know that freedom is the gift of God to all mankind, and we rejoice when others can share it.”
Mr Bush also referred to an event, which he said, he watched on television when Iraqi civilians in Baghdad toppled a statue of President Saddam Hussein with the help of US Marines. The US president called it a symbolic demonstration of liberation.
