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Bush Pledges 'No Retreat' in Terror War

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

On a day when the postwar U.S. death toll climbed past the number killed in major combat, President Bush pledged "no retreat" in the war on terrorism and defended his actions in Iraq amid calls for more international help.

"We're on the offensive against terror, and we will stay on the offensive against terror," Bush told about 6,000 people Tuesday in a graying audience at the American Legion's 85th national conference.

"We've adopted a new strategy for a new kind of war: We will not wait for known enemies to strike us again. We will strike them ... before they hit more of our cities and kill more of our citizens."

Bush faces tenuous situations on several fronts.

In Afghanistan, U.S.-led troops are meeting with an increasingly well-organized Taliban fighters. Rising violence between the Israelis and Palestinians has rocked the U.S.-brokered road map for peace. In Iraq, reconstruction work has been dealt a major setback by the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, and coalition forces still face persistent resistance from Saddam Hussein loyalists and terrorists.

A grim milestone was reached Tuesday when the U.S. death toll in postwar Iraq surpassed the number killed during major combat. When Bush declared aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1 that major combat operations had ended, the death toll was 138. Since then, 140 have died, including two on Tuesday.

Although no weapons of mass destruction have been found and some analysts point to loose links between Saddam and al-Qaida, Bush insisted that the United States was right to invade Iraq. He said U.S.-led forces removed a brutal dictatorship that built, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, sponsored terror and persecuted its people.

While the president was in St. Louis, L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, was at the White House talking about the situation in Iraq with Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

He cited progress in Iraq: More than 8,200 tons of ammunition seized since May 1. Forty-two of the 55 most-wanted Iraqi leaders captured or killed. "The more progress we make in Iraq, the more desperate the terrorists will become," he said.

He cited progress in Afghanistan too: Roads being built. Medical clinics opening. Young girls attending school for the first time. Nearly two-thirds of known senior al-Qaida leaders, operational managers and other key figures have either been captured or killed.

On the rising violence between Israel and the Palestinians, Bush called on every leader in the Middle East and the Palestinian people to cut off all money and support for terrorists and actively fight terror on all fronts.

This was Bush's 12th presidential trip to Missouri, a swing state in next year's election that Bush narrowly won in 2000.

Feeling elbowed in his home state, Rep. Dick Gephardt, a Democratic hopeful for president, said Bush needs to ask the United Nations and NATO for help.

"If we're going to succeed in winning the peace in Iraq, we're going to have to have help," Gephardt said. "He has not yet gone to these international organizations and gotten the help we need. It is incomprehensible to me that he does not go and get the help we need."

The United States is considering a new United Nations resolution that would urge more nations to join coalition forces in Iraq, but so far, Secretary of State Colin Powell is finding only scant support it. Bush said he would continue to challenge other countries to join in the mission.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., another Democratic hopeful, accused the Bush administration of poor planning and a lack of candor with the American people about Iraq.

"I believe it is wrong for our troops to be turned from warriors into police officers without the training, support, and numbers they need," Kerry said. "And it is equally wrong for the administration to have stubbornly refused the offer of other nations to share the risks and authority in Iraq."

The speech was billed as an update on the war on terrorism, but Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham expressed disappointment.

"I had hoped that President Bush would finally drop his campaign-style rhetoric and give us straight answers and a vision for what lies ahead for the American people and our uniformed men and women," he said. "Instead, we got the same old fluff, the same old empty rhetoric, the same old sugarcoating of a very bad situation."

Before the speech, Bush attended a luncheon in St. Paul that raked in $1.4 million for his re-election campaign, raising the total in his campaign coffers to more than $55 million.

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