Bush defends Iraq war on its fifth anniversary

David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers
Published On: 03/24/2008

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Wednesday gave a rousing defense of the Iraq war on its fifth anniversary, claiming that “the successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable,” but Democrats and war protesters made it clear that they’ll continue to insist that the conflict is a disaster.

Bush, speaking to a polite but restrained Pentagon audience, refused to concede any setbacks in the war, where nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed and the country has been plunged into sectarian violence. About 158,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq.

The president, who issued the order to start “Operation Iraqi Freedom” on March 19, 2003, did acknowledge Wednesday that there’s “an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting . . . whether the fight was worth winning . . . and whether we can win it.”

That debate raged Wednesday on the rain-soaked streets of Washington and across the political world, providing a vivid preview of the fall election campaign.

About 30 people were arrested when they attempted to block access to the Internal Revenue Service building in downtown Washington. A veterans group marched with American flags upside down. A knot of protesters gathered in front of the nearby American Petroleum Institute offices, saying, “No blood for oil.” Around the country, hundreds of antiwar vigils were planned for Wednesday night.

Democratic officials echoed the protesters’ views, as presidential candidate Barack Obama told a Fayetteville, N.C., audience that when the 2002 decision to go to war was made, “there was a president for whom ideology overrode pragmatism.”

Rival Hillary Clinton offered similar remarks earlier in the week, saying, “the mistakes in Iraq are not the responsibility of our men and women in uniform, but of their commander in chief.”