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WASHINGTON, May 2: President George W. Bush welcomed the end of major combat in Iraq from the decks of an American warship on Thursday against a backdrop of cheering US sailors.
He declared that US forces had achieved the objective of unseating former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, but warned that Washington had only won a battle in the ‘war on terrorism’.
“Any outlaw regime” that threatened the civilized world would be confronted, said Mr Bush while speaking from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
The carefully worded 25-minute speech avoided declaring an outright victory in the war to avoid legal complications such a declaration could have caused to the United States. Under the Geneva Convention once war is declared over, the victorious army must release prisoners of war and halt operations targeting specific leaders.
If there were several messages on the Abraham Lincoln’s deck, one that could be heard across the world was: no nation can match America’s military might.
ABOARD USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN: From the deck of a US aircraft carrier off the California coast, President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on Thursday and called the six-week war “one victory” in the campaign against terror, Reuters reported from the carrier.
After making a dramatic cable-assisted landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is steaming home with its crew of more than 5,000 from the longest deployment in three decades, Bush said the United States and its allies had prevailed in Iraq.
“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Bush said in a televised address from the carrier certain to provide powerful pictures for his re-election campaign next year. “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”
In his speech, Bush came close to declaring victory but officials said his address was not meant to be a formal end to hostilities. Under international law, that would trigger the release of Iraqi prisoners of war and bar US forces from trying to kill Saddam if he is still alive.
But it sets the stage for the US-led operations in Iraq to focus on reconstruction. Among the key objectives yet to be achieved, Bush listed “finding leaders of the old regime who will be held to account” the search for “hidden chemical and biological weapons” and rebuilding Iraq.
Bush cautioned Americans that United States was not yet ready to leave Iraq.
“We have difficult work to do. ... The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done,” he said.
Bush also has sought to tie the deposed government of President Saddam Hussein to the Al Qaeda organization blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States despite the lack of definitive proof.
“The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror,” he said. “We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding and this much is certain — no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more.”
Bush called the period since Sept. 11 “the 19 months that changed the world” and said the campaign against terror had not ended with the toppling of Saddam in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
