WASHINGTON, Aug 25: President George W. Bush has rejected calls for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, saying that the troops will stay for as long as he is president.

“So long as I am president, we will stay, we will fight and we will win the war on terrorism,” he told an audience of the National Guard members and their families on Wednesday.

Pulling out now, he said, would “embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America”.

The speech came in response to intensifying anti-war protests that have put Mr Bush on the defensive lately. He is facing declining public support for the war and a growing protest movement galvanized by Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq last year.

Ms Sheehan set up a camp outside the president’s Texas ranch this month, drawing media attention and supporters. Even some Republicans are publicly challenging the wisdom of the mission. On Sunday, Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, said on ABC that Iraq has become “a bogged-down problem not ... dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam.”

Mr Bush’s speech was the beginning of a new effort by the administration to defend the war and underscore its importance. Early next month, President Bush and other administration officials will give more speeches making the case that US involvement in Iraq is essential and is helping stabilize that country.

“A policy of retreat and withdrawal will only make America more vulnerable,” said Bush counselor Dan Bartlett, echoing his boss’s emphatic vow to stay in Iraq “until the terrorists have nowhere to run”.

Mr Bush said that taking the fight to the terrorists and advancing freedom were two key elements in the war on terrorism. And Iraq, he said, was a central front in that war:

“Terrorists like bin Laden and his ally, Zarqawi, are trying to turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, a place where women are beaten, religious and ethnic minorities are executed, and terrorists have sanctuary to plot attacks against free people.”

In the task of advancing freedom, Mr Bush said: “The tide of freedom ebbs and flows, but it is moving in a clear direction, and freedom’s tide is rising in the broader Middle East. In Afghanistan, men and women have formed a free government after suffering one of the most brutal tyrannies on Earth. America is proud to call Afghanistan an ally in the war on terror. In Lebanon, people took to the streets to demand their sovereignty.”