One year later, Bush backs Iraq speech on carrier

By Seattle Times news services

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WASHINGTON — A somber President Bush yesterday acknowledged the mounting death toll among U.S. troops in Iraq and vowed that "their sacrifice will not go in vain."

One year ago today, Bush donned a flight suit, landed on an aircraft carrier and declared "victory" beneath a banner that read "Mission Accomplished." Democrats fretted that the election — not only the Iraq war — might be over.

Nevertheless, the president, now locked in a neck-and-neck race for re-election, stoutly defended his trip to the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, saying the mission had been the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we'd accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein," Bush said. "And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq. As a result, a friend of terror has been removed, and now sits in a jail."

Bush had spoken in more sweeping terms on the carrier. "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," he said. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on."

While at least 594 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since the carrier speech, compared with 138 beforehand, the White House insisted yesterday that major combat has not resumed in the country.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, pressed repeatedly yesterday on how the fighting could not be considered "major," described the violence as "certain areas in Iraq that are dangerous" and "certain areas in Iraq where there are pockets of resistance."

Bush, who met reporters in the Rose Garden yesterday with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin at his side, made his comments when asked if conditions were improving rather than worsening in Iraq. "We're making progress, you bet," Bush said.

He dismissed uprisings in Fallujah and elsewhere as the work of a small band of anti-democracy zealots and terrorists, saying: "We will deal with them, those few who are stopping the hopes of many."
 
Bush expressed confidence that the loss of American lives would lead to a peaceful, democratic Iraq.

"Their sacrifice will not go in vain because there will be a free Iraq," he said. "A free Iraq is in the interest of world peace, because free societies do not harbor terrorists, free societies do not threaten people or use weapons of mass destruction."

A year ago, when U.S. forces had just finished routing Saddam's forces, Democrats feared that Bush had staged the political commercial of a lifetime and asked publicly whether the Republican National Committee had a camera aboard the Lincoln.

Yesterday, Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, called Bush's year-old boast hollow and his basic policy misdirected. The Massachusetts senator told a Fulton, Mo., audience yesterday that the Iraq mission could fail.

"In light of all the mistakes that have been made, no one can say that success is certain," Kerry said, adding that pulling out would only make things worse. Instead, Kerry called for a new policy aimed at involving NATO, the United Nations and a newly created Iraqi security force in a concerted effort to stabilize the country.

"This moment in Iraq is a moment of truth," Kerry said in a speech at Westminster College. "Not just for this administration, the country, the Iraqi people, but for the world. This may be our last chance to get this right. We need to put pride aside to build a stable Iraq."

Polls have shown that Bush's wartime popularity has dimmed and voters have become much more skeptical of his Iraq policy. In a Washington Post-ABC News Poll released before the carrier speech, 70 percent of respondents thought the war in Iraq was worth fighting; that was down to 51 percent two weeks ago. Over the same period, approval of Bush's handling of Iraq fell 30 percentage points, to 45 percent, and the president's overall approval dropped from 71 percent to 51 percent.

Democrats now believe the "Mission Accomplished" imagery will help them erode Bush's credibility and portray him as acting out of hubris, shoddy planning and debunked intelligence.

"This was clearly a case of spiking the ball on the 50-yard line," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., who was President Clinton's political director.

White House officials said they expect frequent reruns of the carrier footage. Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor at Towson University in Maryland who is an authority on the history of White House communications, said the carrier landing "looked too good to be true" and said Bush's aides are so skilled at stagecraft that the visuals "can overtake or confuse the message."

Compiled from The Washington Post, Knight Ridder Newspapers, Newsday and the Los Angeles Times.