Withdrawal date to dishonour troops: Bush’s independence day speech
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, July 4: US President George Bush said on Tuesday that setting a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq would dishonour the deaths of American soldiers there and give new strength to terrorists.
“At a moment when the terrorists have suffered a series of significant blows, setting an artificial timetable would breathe new life into their cause,” he said in a speech on the US Independence Day holiday.
Cheered by several thousand military personnel and their families at the Fort Bragg military base, Mr Bush launched a scathing attack against his domestic political critics urging him to set a date for a pullout from Iraq. Their strategy of setting ‘an artificial timetable’, he said, would be ‘a terrible mistake’ and would undermine the fledgling Iraqi government.
“I will make you this promise: I’m not going to allow the sacrifice of 2527 troops who have died in Iraq to be in vain by pulling out before the job is done,” said Mr Bush, who rarely cites the death toll.
The president sidestepped an issue that has drawn anger in the US Congress four months before the US legislative elections: efforts by some Iraqi leaders to include fighters who killed US soldiers in a proposed amnesty.
The White House has said it will not seek to impose ‘conditions’ on any such pardon, while affirming support for a plan by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that would not extend forgiveness to killers of US forces.
Mr Bush said that the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq killed by US forces, had weakened the resistance. “At this moment of vulnerability for the enemy,” he said, “we will continue to strike their network. We will disrupt their operations, and we will bring their leaders to justice.”
But critics of the Iraq invasion, who launched a new wave of protests on Tuesday, pointed out that the outlook was less optimistic in Baghdad.
Gunmen in camouflaged uniforms kidnapped Iraq’s deputy electricity minister, Raed al-Hares, and 11 of his bodyguards in eastern Baghdad. The kidnapping occurred three days after gunmen seized a Sunni female legislator in east Baghdad; she and seven bodyguards are still missing.
Tense conditions also exist currently in Afghanistan, where US-led troops are facing fierce resistance from the Taliban in southern sections of the nation.
Mr Bush noted that the US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, has been working with Iraq’s government “on a path forward” expected to include plans for drawing down US troop levels as Iraq’s security forces improve.
