Washington – Trying to build support for Iraq war strategy, President Bush acknowledged today that reconstruction has proceeded with “fits and starts” but asserted that spreading economic progress is lifting hopes for a democratic future.
In particular, Bush cited Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, and Mosul in northern Iraq – once the sites of some of the bloodiest battles of the war – as two cities where headway is being made.
“In places like Mosul and Najaf, residents are seeing tangible progress in their lives,” Bush said. “They’re gaining a personal stake in a peaceful future and their confidence in Iraq’s democracy is growing. The progress in these cities is being replicated across much of Iraq. And more of Iraq’s people are seeing the real benefits that a democratic society can bring.” There’s still plenty of work left to do in cities like Najaf and Mosul, he said.
“Like most of Iraq, the reconstruction in Najaf has proceeded with fits and starts since liberation,” Bush said. “It’s been uneven. Sustaining electric power remains a major challenge. …
Security in Najaf has improved substantially but threats remain.
There are still kidnappings and militias and armed gangs are exerting more influence than they should in a free society.” Bush’s speech came amid new violence in Iraq. Gunmen killed three police officers in the northern city of Kirkuk and freed a wounded man who had been arrested for plotting to kill a judge in the Saddam Hussein trial. A day earlier, two suicide bombers detonated explosives inside Baghdad’s main police academy, killing at least 43 people and wounding more than 70.
“The president says the security situation on the ground is better. It is not,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said. “More of the same in Iraq is not making us safer.” After a caucus meeting on Iraq, she and other Democrats in leadership sought to project a unified front on the war, even though they disagree over just when U.S. troops should return home.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Bush failed to provide a strategy for success or speak honestly about the failures in rebuilding Iraq and the challenges ahead. “Instead, he cherry picked isolated examples of Iraq’s reconstruction from two cities that provide an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the situation on the ground for most Iraqis,” Reid said.
Bush’s speech, hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, was the second in a series of four to answer criticism and questions about the U.S. presence more two and a half years after the war started. He spoke to a group of foreign policy experts, many of whom have been critical of his policies. They gave him a cool reception. Some in the audience interrupted to applaud when Bush said the U.S. would not run from Iraq, but most sat stoically during the entire speech.
Bush is shouldering the lowest job approval rating of his presidency, and the latest series of speeches amount to a public relations campaign to respond to political pressure that has mounted as U.S. deaths have eclipsed 2,100. He and other administration officials are working to shore up slumping public support for the war in the run-up to the Dec. 15 vote in Iraq to create a democratically elected government that will run the country for the next four years.
He said the United States has helped Iraqis conduct nearly 3,000 renovation projects at schools, train more than 30,000 teachers, distribute more than 8 million textbooks, rebuild irrigation infrastructure to help more than 400,000 rural Iraqis and improve drinking water for more than 3 million people.
The U.S.-led coalition has helped Iraqis introduce a new currency, reopen a stock exchange, extend $21 million in microcredit and small business loans to Iraqi entrepreneurs, he said.
“This economic development and growth will be really important to addressing the high unemployment rate across parts of that country,” the president said.
While Bush talked about reconstruction projects and the reopening of schools, markets and hospitals, the upgrading of roads and the growth of construction jobs in some cities, he also acknowledged that both cities still face challenges.
“Iraqis are beginning to see that a free life will be a better life,” Bush said. “Reconstruction has not always gone as well as we had hoped, primarily because of the security challenges on the ground. Rebuilding a nation devastated by a dictator is a large undertaking.” Critics of the administration’s reconstruction strategy in Iraq say not enough has been done since the U.S.-led invasion to reduce unemployment, step up oil production and keep the lights on.
The administration also is trumpeting progress on the economic front in a 35-page booklet titled “Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” that it released a week ago when the president gave the first speech of the series at the U.S. Naval Academy.
There, he highlighted progress in training Iraqi army and police forces. Democrats dismissed his remarks at the time as a stay-the-course speech with no real strategy for success Senate Democrats issued a report saying the U.S. faces a reconstruction gap. While the administration cites the number of new schools built, roads paved and businesses created, “the simple fact is that basic needs – jobs, essential services, health care – remain unmet,” according to the report obtained by The Associated Press.
“Iraq’s economic progress has fallen significantly short of administration’s goals,” the Democratic report said. “Clearly, efforts to grow Iraq’s economy have been challenging because Saddam Hussein left his nation’s economic infrastructure in shambles.
However, the Bush administration has exacerbated the challenge by its poor planning and policies.” Billions of dollars have been lost waste, fraud and abuse, the report said.
Bush noted that the infiltration of militia groups and Iraqi security forces, especially the Iraqi police, is a problem. He said corruption also remains a problem at both the national and local levels of the Iraqi government.
“We will not tolerate fraud,” Bush said. “Our embassy in Baghdad is helping to demand transparency and accountability for the money being invested in reconstruction. … The Iraqi people expect money to be spent openly and honestly, and so do the American people.”
