- WASHINGTON (AFP) -- President
George W. Bush has warned against a hasty US withdrawal from Iraq.
-
- He also dismissed worries that post-war efforts there
were rudderless, declaring: "The person who is in charge is me."
-
- The President denied that the occupation tying down about
130,000 US soldiers in Iraq had overstretched the US military and refused
to specify a timeframe for when those troops could go home.
-
- "We're winning decisively in Iraq," Bush said
in the exchange, which was part of an aggressive public relations offensive
to soothe worries about the rising human and financial costs of stabilizing
and rebuilding that country.
-
- "The definition of when we get out is 'when there
is a free and peaceful Iraq based upon a constitution and elections,' and
obviously we'd like that to happen as quickly as possible," he told
his questioner.
-
- "But we are mindful of rushing the process, which
would create the conditions for failure," said the President, who
drew rare fire from lawmakers over the weekend for not doing more to quell
infighting among his top aides.
-
- "All due respect to politicians here in Washington,
DC, who make comments, they're just wrong about our strategy," said
Bush. "The person who is in charge is me."
-
- Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar,
a member of Bush's Republican party, said in rare criticism on Sunday that
"the President has to be the President" and take control when
his advisers differ.
-
- "That means the President over the vice president
and over these secretaries," the lawmaker, an influential voice on
foreign policy, told NBC television's Meet the Press Sunday news program.
-
- Lugar's comments came after Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld snapped at a reporter asking why he did not know that post-war
Iraq operations were being restructured in a way that appeared to diminish
his influence there.
-
- The White House later acknowledged that Rumsfeld might
not have been told of the creation of the "Iraq Stabilisation Group"
under Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice until the decision
was given the green light.
-
- The rare public squabble came as mounting concerns about
US casualties in Iraq and the soaring price tag for post-war efforts -
combined with the ailing US economy - have eroded Bush's standing in opinion
polls.
-
- But yesterday he professed not to be concerned about
meeting the same fate as his father, former president George Bush, who
won the 1991 Gulf War over Iraq but lost his bid for a second term on the
perception that he did not care enough about the economy.
-
- "I just don't make decisions on polls," he
said when asked about that family history. "If the people don't think
I'm doing my job, they'll find somebody they think can do better."
-
- And Bush bristled when he was asked about the failure
of US-led troops in Iraq to find any weapons of mass destruction, arms
he said Saddam Hussein possessed and might hand off to terrorists eager
to attack the United States.
-
- "You bet he was a gathering threat, and America
did the right thing by getting rid of him," he said.
-
- Copyright 2003 News Limited.
-
- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7555255%255E1702,00.html
|
