Bush Says U.S. Won’t Withdraw From Iraq

Bush Says U.S. Won’t Withdraw From Iraq
President Bush Says He Won’t Pull U.S. Troops Out of Iraq Before Country Is Stabilized
ABC News International
RIGA, Latvia Nov 28, 2006 (AP)— President Bush, under pressure to change direction in Iraq, said Tuesday he will not be persuaded by any calls to withdraw American troops before the country is stabilized.

“There’s one thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. “We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.”

A bipartisan panel on Iraq is finalizing recommendations on Iraq. The group led by former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., plan to present ideas to Bush next month.
The commissioners are expected to debate the feasibility of withdrawal timetables.
Recent U.S. elections added fuel to the argument from Democrats that U.S. soldiers need to come home. In Washington, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Bush must work with Democrats on stopping the violence in Iraq.

“We want to work in a bipartisan way to settle this,” Pelosi said. “If the president persists on the course that he is on, that will be more difficult.”

Bush has resisted troop withdrawals even while projecting the need for a different approach.

“We’ll continue to be flexible and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed,” the president said.

Bush pushed back against skeptics of his goal of spreading freedom across the Middle East. “I understand these doubts but I do not share them,” the president said.
Bush has two days of meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki later in the week.
Earlier Tuesday, Bush blamed the escalating bloodshed in Iraq on an al-Qaida plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge, and refused to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war.
Bush said he will ask al-Maliki to explain his plan for quelling the violence.

“The Maliki government is going to have to deal with that violence and we want to help them do so,” the president said. “It’s in our interest that we succeed.”

Directly seeking help from Iran and Syria with Iraq, as part of new, aggressive diplomacy throughout the region, is expected to be among the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton group.
But Bush repeated his administration’s reluctance to talk with two nations it regards as pariah states working to destabilize the Middle East.
Far from reaching out to Iran and Syria, Bush also denounced them for trying to destabilize the fragile, Western-backed government in Lebanon.

“That government is being undermined, in my opinion, by extremist forces encouraged out of Syria and Iran,” Bush said. “Why? Because a democracy will be a major defeat for those who articulate extremist points of view.”

Meanwhile, a U.S. intelligence official said the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon is believed to be training small groups of Iraqis affiliated with anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. As many as 2,000 fighters from Sadr’s Mahdi army or his splinter militia may have been trained since the fall of Saddam Hussein. In addition, Hezbollah fighters have gone to Iraq to train Shiite fighters there.
Complete article is HERE.

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