By DPA
Washington : US President George W. Bush has said that he supports Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, one day after making remarks that were seen as an effort by Bush to distance himself from the Iraqi leader.
“Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man, with a difficult job, and I support him,” Bush said Wednesday in a speech to a group of veterans in Kansas City, Missouri.
“It’s not up to the politicians in Washington, DC, to say whether he will remain in his position. That is up to the Iraqi people, who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship,” Bush added.
During a press conference at a North American summit in Canada Tuesday, Bush said there was frustration with the Iraqi government, and that if it did not responds to the needs of the Iraqis it was up to them to replace it.
The comments were interpreted as Bush having lost confidence in al-Maliki, and on Wednesday Bush sought to recast the meaning.
On Monday, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, called on the Iraqi parliament to oust al-Maliki. Senator Hillary Clinton, a presidential candidate, added her to voice to Levin’s position Wednesday.
“The Maliki government is non-functional and cannot produce a political settlement, because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders,” Clinton said in a statement.
Democrats have been frustrated by the Iraqi government’s slow pace at addressing crucial issues like political reconciliation and creating a law to establish rules for sharing oil revenue among Iraq’s rival ethnic and religious groups.
“Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this,” Bush said. “As I noted yesterday, the Iraqi government is distributing oil revenues across its provinces, despite not having an oil revenue law on its books.”
Bush added that under al-Maliki, the Iraqi parliament has passed 60 legislative bills.
“A free Iraq’s not going to be perfect,” Bush said. “A free Iraq will not make decisions as quickly as the country did under the dictatorship.”
Bush was addressing the veterans group in Kansas City, Missouri in an attempt to win back public support for the unpopular war in Iraq and cast the conflict as an ideological struggle similar to the fight against totalitarianism during and after World War II.
Bush warned that a premature pullout of troops from Iraq could result in human suffering like that following the US withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
“One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps,’ and ‘killing fields,'” Bush said.
Bush has been under intense pressure from the public and the Democratic-controlled Congress to begin withdrawing US forces from Iraq. Wednesday’s speech and a second one scheduled for Tuesday come a month ahead of a crucial report by the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and his top commander, General David Petraeus, on the political and military progress in Iraq.
A poor assessment will likely galvanize the Democrats’ effort to force a withdrawal and likely push more of Bush’s Republicans toward calling for an end of the US role in the Iraqi conflict. Bush, however, has remained steadfast in his determination to prevail in Iraq.
“We fight for the possibility that decent men and women across the broader Middle East can realize their destiny and raise up societies based on freedom and justice and personal dignity,” Bush said. “As long as I am commander in chief, we will fight to win.”
“Prevailing in this struggle is essential to the future of our nation,” he added.
Bush highlighted the US role in rebuilding Japan after World War II despite scepticism from critics who said the country was not fit for democracy, and the US will to defend South Korea from the communist invasion from the North.
He discussed the repression that followed once North Vietnam overran South Vietnam after the US pullout in 1975 and the plight of Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Bush’s comparisons to historical events were flawed and renewed her call to begin withdrawing US forces from Iraq.
“In an attempt to justify his stay-the-course strategy in Iraq, President Bush is offering false lessons from history,” Pelosi’s statement said. “The American people have already judged the President’s war in Iraq as the wrong war at the wrong time, and are ready for our troops to come home.”