Bush, Blair Says Sorry for Iraq War

Bush, Blair make Iraq war mea culpas

First posted 01:15pm (Mla time) May 26, 2006


WASHINGTON -- US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair bluntly acknowledged that the Iraq war had been marked by "mistakes" and "missteps" but insisted that the world must support the new Baghdad government.
During an extraordinary 50-minute White House press conference Thursday, the political brothers-in-arms expressed distress at many aspects of the campaign which brought down Saddam Hussein but also undermined their own popularity.

Bush expressed regret for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and some of his tough-talking comments.

Blair said the "de-Baathification" of Iraq -- the clearing out of Saddam followers -- had been badly handled.

There was none of the determined bravado that marked earlier press conferences after their regular meetings over the past three years.

"No question that the Iraq war has created a sense of consternation here in America," said Bush. "I mean, when you turn on your TV screens and see innocent people die day in and day out, it affects the mentality of our country."

"Not everythingsince liberation has turned out as the way we had expected or hoped. We've learned from our mistakes, adjusted our methods and have built on our successes," said the US president.

Bush said he should not have made gung-ho comments such as "bring 'em on" when referring to the insurgents in July 2003 as the attacks on US troops and Iraqi civilians mounted.

"I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner," Bush declared.

Both Bush and Blair have seen their public standings collapse over the past year, in large part because of the war, but both insist they were right to order the March, 2003 invasion.

"The decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power was controversial. We did not find the weapons of mass destruction that we all believed were there, and that's raised questions about whether the sacrifice in Iraq has been worth it," Bush said.

"Despite setbacks and missteps, I strongly believe we did and are doing the right thing," he added.

Bush refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of the 135,000 US troops in Iraq, insisting "we will keep the force level there necessary to win."

With a majority of US public opinion now against the war, Bush said: "It's important for the American people to know that politics isn't going to make the decision as to the size of our force level."

The president said the world could not abandon Iraq. "Make no mistake about it: What you're seeing in Iraq could happen all over the world if we don't stand fast and achieve the objective."

Blair spoke of his optimism after a visit to Baghdad on Monday to meet the new Prime Minister Nur al-Maliki. He said he believed it would be possible for Iraqi forces to take over nearly all security duties by the end of 2007.

"I came away thinking that the challenge is still immense, but I also came away more certain than ever that we should rise to it," said Blair.

Blair also acknowledged errors, but insisted there should be no regrets. "I think it's easy to go back over mistakes that we may have made. But the biggest reason why Iraq has been difficult is the determination by our opponents to defeat us. And I don't think we should be surprised at that."

"I know the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was deeply divisive for the international community," said the prime minister, "and there's no point in rehearsing those arguments over and over again."

"I think that probably in retrospect, though at the time it was very difficult to argue this, we could have done de-Baathification in a more differentiated way than we did," said Blair.

Many analysts have said the wholesale exclusion of members of Saddam's Baath Party from leadership roles during the post-invasion occupation fuelled the insurgency.

Blair said there was too much of a tendency to see "every piece of ghastly carnage on our television screens, every tragic loss of our own forces" as "a setback and as a failure."

The international community should see it as a warning "for us to rise to the challenge of defeating these people who are committing this carnage," he declared.



So is that it? Just sorry because we bombed your poor country? Thank you and good day to the thousands of young soldiers who all died in vain? Sorry for raising the world's oil prices? Goodbye to all hostages killed in Iraq?