Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 15 April 2004 — President Bush stood before the nation on Tuesday night and strongly defended his policies in Iraq and the war on terrorism. Critics yesterday said he refused to admit mistakes and missed opportunities to explain what it will take to achieve his goal of a free and stable Iraq, and offered no exit strategy.

“Now is the time, and Iraq is the place in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world. We must not waver,” Bush said during his twelfth press conference in three years and his third during prime time.

“Nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens,” he said. “I don’t. It’s a tough time for the American people to see that. It’s gut-wrenching.”

Yesterday several newspapers were critical of the president: “Happily, President Bush finally held a primetime news conference last night. Unhappily, he failed to address either of the questions uppermost in Americans’ minds: How to move Iraq from its current chaos, and what he has learned from the 9/11 investigations,” noted the New York Times.

During his combination speech and news conference at the White House, Bush rejected suggestions that Iraq was becoming another Vietnam — a quagmire without a ready exit. “I think that analogy is false,” he said. “I also happen to think that the analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy.”

But he admitted the US presence in Iraq is difficult for Iraqis: “They’re not happy they’re occupied. I wouldn’t be happy if I were occupied, either.”

Bush identified three groups as instigators of violence in Iraq as remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime working with militants; terrorists from other countries, and supporters of the Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.

He sidestepped pointed questions about his policies. He described his vision of a democratic Iraq, but when asked whom the US would turn over the government to in Iraq, Bush said: “We will find that out soon.”

“Were the coalition to step back from the June 30 pledge, many Iraqis would question our intentions and feel their hopes betrayed. And those in Iraq who trade in hatred and conspiracy theories would find a larger audience and gain a stronger hand,” Bush said.

Critics noted with concern that five times during his speech, Bush used the term “we’re going to change the world.”

Freedom was given to Americans by “the Almighty,” he said, and encouraging freedom throughout the world is “what we have been called to do.”