Bush: Troops in Iraq past 2008

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Tuesday that U.S. troops will be in Iraq after his presidency ends in 2009.

"I'm optimistic we'll succeed" in Iraq," he insisted. "If not, I'd pull our troops out."

Asked at a White House news conference whether there will come a time no U.S. forces are in Iraq, he said, "That will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."

Pressed on that response, Bush said that for him to discuss complete withdrawal would mean he was setting a timetable, which he refuses to do.

In the hastily called, hourlong news conference, the president said he didn't believe Iraq had tumbled into a civil war and suggested that success stories are overshadowed by news coverage of dramatic insurgent attacks.

"They're capable of blowing up innocent life so it ends up on your TV show," Bush told a CBS News reporter. "... I can understand how Americans are worried about whether or not we can win."

The president also said he disagreed with former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who told the BBC on Sunday that if the current state of Iraq isn't civil war "then God knows what civil war is."

"Listen, we all recognize that there is violence, that there's sectarian violence," the president said. "But the way I look at the situation is that the Iraqis took a look and decided not to go to civil war."

As evidence, Bush said the Iraqi military hadn't splintered into sectarian factions and that U.S. military and diplomatic officials there didn't view the situation as civil war.

Bush said repeatedly that the United States is making progress in Iraq, an argument he has made publicly four days in a row in an apparent effort to rally public opinion.

Virtually all recent national polls put the president's job-approval rating in the low to mid-30s, his all-time low range and show a growing skepticism of the war among Americans.

A Gallup Poll released Friday found that a clear majority of Americans, 60 percent, think the war isn't worth the costs, 19 percent called for immediately withdrawing U.S. troops, 35 percent favored a pullout by March 2007 and 39 percent said troops should remain in Iraq indefinitely.

The issue is expected to dominate congressional elections in November. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Bush said the "trauma" of war has left the public and even some lawmakers in his party understandably shaken and skeptical of his vow that the United States will prevail.

"Nobody likes war," Bush said.

"I understand people being disheartened when they turn on their TV screen," he said. "Nobody likes beheadings" and other grim images.

The president also was asked to respond to a weekend opinion column by retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign, charging that he's "incompetent" and has mismanaged the war in Iraq.

"I think he's done a fine job," Bush said of Rumsfeld, adding that U.S. military tactics have changed in Iraq to deal with changing circumstances, a tacit admission that earlier occupation policies had failed.

However, Bush did not rule out bringing aboard a veteran Washington operative to help soothe relations with an increasingly restive Republican Congress, a move aides said might happen soon.

Bush also rejected the notion that his Iraq policy is based on wishful thinking. "I say that I am talking realistically to people," he said.

Moments later, he said the reason U.S. forces went to Iraq was to "make sure we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy."

Since the invasion, Bush has emphasized different rationales for the Iraq invasion, such as the need to topple a dangerous dictator and to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, which have yet to be found.

Bush said he would call home the approximately 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq if he was not confident about his victory plan.

In a rarity for Bush, he took a question from Helen Thomas, 85, a liberal columnist and unabashed critic of Bush and the war who frequently accuses the White House of lying about the conflict.

Thomas jokingly told Bush he would "be sorry" for calling on her and repeatedly tried to interrupt his response to her question about his shifting rationales for the war. "I really didn't regret it [calling on Thomas]," he said. "I kind of semi-regretted it."

The president acknowledged the war had cost him some of the support he claimed just after he was re-elected in 2004, the political capital he might otherwise use to win congressional enactment of his domestic agenda.

"I'm spending that capital on the war," he said.

The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune contributed to this report.