At the launch of a new campaign to counter criticism of the Iraq war, President Bush spoke to National Guard members in New Hampshire today, justifying his decision to remove Saddam Hussein, touting successes in rebuilding the Middle East nation and affirming America’s resolve to continue the fight against terrorism.
“Who can possibly think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power?” the president asked. “Surely not the dissidents who would be in prison or end up in mass graves. Surely not the women who would fill torture chambers. Surely not the victims he murdered with poisonous gas. Surely not anyone who cares about human rights and democracy and stability in the Middle East.”
Bush declared there is “only one humane reaction to the fall of Saddam Hussein: Good riddance.”
Noting an ongoing investigation led by David Kay has provided evidence of an “elaborate campaign” to hide illegal weapons, he asserted the United Nations Security Council “was right to demand that Saddam Hussein disarm, and we were right to enforce that demand.”
The president’s speech to reservists and members of the New Hampshire Air National Guard and Army National Guard in Portsmouth, N.H., was the beginning of a long day of appearances in New England and a trip to Kentucky to campaign for a Republican candidate for governor.
It came one day after the White House launched an information offensive to convince Americans the Iraq war was justified.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told a Chicago foreign-policy forum yesterday there now is “hard evidence” of the threat posed by Saddam.
She insisted the U.N. Security Council would have backed the war if it had the evidence Kay has presented of many illegal weapons programs.
“We now have hard evidence of facts that no one should ever have doubted,” Rice said.
In the president’s speech to the guard members, he also touched on the economy, contending that “by reducing taxes we did the right thing at the right time,” but have further work to do, noting one in five jobs has been lost in New Hampshire’s manufacturing sector.
He touted a six-point plan, including helping small businesses with the high cost of health care, a sound national energy policy that makes the country less dependent on foreign sources, cuts in government regulations, a trade policy that “levels the playing field” for American manufacturers and ensuring tax relief passed by Congress is made permanent.
The president pointed out the current legislation stipulates the tax cuts will be gradually phased out, with the child tax credit, for example, scheduled to be reduced from $1,000 per child to $700 in two years.
“When we passed tax relief, I know most Americans did not expect to see higher taxes come back through the back door,” he said.
But the president focused his remarks on the ongoing war on terror, restating his philosophy that “wars are won on the offensive” and America and its allies are staying on the offensive, “striking our enemies so they cannot strike us.”
Emphasizing “free nations are peaceful nations,” the president recalled the lessons of history.
The U.S. “did not run from Germany or Japan in World War II,” he said, and these are “now democratic societies that no longer wage war.”
“That is our mission in Iraq,” he said, where schools and hospitals are reopening, water and electricity is returning and “life is getting better.”
“Just ask people who have been there,” he said, alluding to the contrasting perception given by the media. “They are stunned when they get back.”
Bush said the United States’ work in Iraq is “essential to our own security.”
“No band of murderers will stop that work or shake the will of America,” he declared, referring to the ongoing terrorist attacks by remaining operatives of Saddam’s regime and foreign elements.
Earlier today, a suicide car bomber killed eight people in an attack on a Baghdad police station managed partly by U.S. forces.
A “stable Iraq,” the president emphasized, “will no longer be a breeding ground for tyranny, terror and aggression.”
“We’re rounding up the enemy and taking their weapons. We are working our way through the famous deck of cards,” he said, noting 43 of the 55 most wanted leaders from the Saddam regime have been captured or killed and “the other 12 have a lot to worry about.”
Last week, the president said, the first battalion of Iraq’s new army began training and within a year the country will have a force of about 40,000.
“Our goal in Iraq is to leave behind a stable society,” he said. “Iraq now has a governing council which has appointed interim ministers. Will move toward national elections. We want this process to go as quickly as possible.”
The president lamented that in the war on terror, “some of our best have fallen. We mourn every loss.”
“We will always be grateful that liberty has found such brave defenders,” he said.
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