Crawford, Texas – Faced with mounting casualties and signs of diminished support for the war, President Bush said Thursday that while the United States is making progress in Iraq, it is too soon to say when the number of U.S. troops could be scaled back.
Speaking in unusually personal terms, forced on him in part by the presence outside his Texas ranch of the mother of an American soldier killed last year in Baghdad, Bush said he had considered and rejected calls for an immediate withdrawal or even an imminent scaling back of some troops.
And he signaled that, despite planning by senior Pentagon officials for a potential troop reduction as early as next spring, he is not certain Iraqis can handle their own security well enough for the U.S. to leave anytime soon.
Bush dismissed talk among some Pentagon officials of an immediate troop reduction as “speculation based upon progress that some are seeing in Iraq as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to take the fight to the enemy.”
He said no decision had been made about either drawing down U.S. forces or adding more to safeguard the Iraqi elections in December, another step under consideration.
“Pulling the troops out now would send a terrible signal to the enemy,” Bush said.
Recent discussions about a pullout among Pentagon officials have focused on phased withdrawals, not a full-scale withdrawal.
The Pentagon and the Bush administration in the past few weeks have struggled to calibrate their message on troop numbers in Iraq.
Just two weeks ago, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. ground commander in Iraq, reaffirmed to reporters his own statement in March that the Pentagon could make “some fairly substantial reductions” – which others estimated could mean reducing the 138,000 troops by 30,000 – if the political process remained on track and Iraqi forces assumed more responsibility.
That political timetable, however, faced fresh strains Thursday as one of Iraq’s leading Shiite politicians backed demands for a semi-independent region in the south, a call that could hinder the completion of the country’s new constitution.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed to be indicating that the administration had an exit strategy for Iraq when he urged the country’s political leaders last month to stick to the timetable. Those signals angered conservative allies of the administration, who criticized Rumsfeld and the administration for rushing to withdraw from Iraq.
In the face of criticism, military officials noted that the Pentagon adjusted its approach this week to say U.S. forces would remain in the lead role in Iraq at least through next summer.
For Bush, questions about an exit strategy in Iraq have become especially delicate as a crowd of war protesters has expanded at the edge of his ranch, rallying around Cynthia Sheehan, the California woman who began a vigil here last weekend demanding to see the president. Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq in 2004, says she will not leave until Bush meets with her to explain the reason for her son’s death and to hear her argument for quickly ending the war.
Although two senior White House officials met with Sheehan when she arrived, Bush has not done so, fueling passions within a growing group of demonstrators that now includes at least five other mothers of slain American soldiers.
In his public statement, Bush took pains to convey his sympathy to the families of soldiers in Iraq and for Sheehan, whose campaign has drawn widespread media attention.
“Listen, I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan,” Bush said, who met Sheehan once before in a group of grieving relatives, at a time when she said she did not want to make a public case against the war. “She feels strongly about her position, and she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position,” he said.
“And I’ve thought long and hard about her position. I’ve heard her position from others, which is, get out of Iraq now. And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so.”
Jeff Falkel of Highlands Ranch, whose son – Army Special Forces Sgt. Christopher M. Falkel – was killed Monday in Afghanistan, took Bush’s side Thursday and said the U.S. should not pull its military out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
“These soldiers who are fighting over there volunteered to be there, and we must support them,” the elder Falkel said. “We can sleep better at night because of the men and women who putting their lives at risk over there to fight a war on terrorism.”
Denver Post staff writer Manny Gonzales contributed to this report.