President Bush Defends Decision to Go to War in Iraq

President Bush accepted responsibility on Wednesday for going to war with faulty intelligence, but firmly defended a decision that has deeply divided the country. "We cannot and will not leave Iraq until victory is achieved," he said.

The president said that Thursday's parliamentary elections in Iraq are a watershed moment that will inspire democracy across the Middle East. But with public opinion still running against his mission, Bush still was left defending his decision to go to war nearly three years ago.

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq," the president told a foreign policy forum on the eve of elections to establish Iraq's first permanent, democratically elected government. "And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that."

"We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of brutal dictator," Bush said. "It is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in his place.

"My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power," the president told the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Most Americans see progress on establishing democracy in Iraq, but they are less optimistic about efforts to prevent a civil war and reduce the number of civilian casualties, polling found.

Almost six in 10 - 56 percent - said they thought progress is being made in the establishment of democracy, but almost as many - 53 percent - said they thought the United States was losing ground in reducing civilian casualties, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Answering critics who have said he had offered no clear definition of victory in Iraq, Bush offered a succinct summation.

"Victory will be achieved by meeting certain objectives: when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can protect their own people, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot attacks against our country," he said. "These objectives, not timetables set by politicians in Washington, will drive our force levels in Iraq."

Text: President Bush's Speech on Iraq War