U.S. President George W. Bush. - REUTERS
WASHINGTON (AP):
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. Bush accepted responsibility yesterday for going to war with faulty intelligence, but firmly defended a decision that has deeply divided the country. "We cannot and will not leave Iraq until victory is achieved."
"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq," Bush told a foreign policy forum on the eve of elections to establish Iraq's first permanent, democratically elected government.
"And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that," Bush said.
The president said today's parliamentary election in Iraq is a watershed moment that will inspire democracy across the Middle East. But with public opinion still running against his mission, Bush continues to defend his decision to go to war nearly three years ago.
"We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of brutal dictator," Bush said. "It is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in his place.
'THE RIGHT DECISION'
"My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power," Bush told the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.
As he usually does, Bush asserted that the Iraq of the future, with a functioning democracy and thriving economy, would be a model for other nations in the turbulent Middle East. But he added a specific reference to the inspiration that a free Iraq could provide to reformers in the region's two governments most hostile to the United States - Syria and Iran.
