Conor O'Clery
North America Editor
Six months ago, President Bush stood on the aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln before a banner saying "Mission Accomplished" and declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Yesterday at his first full press conference since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April, and in the wake of an upsurge of violence in Iraq, Mr Bush was asked if he now regretted what he said.
Mr Bush responded that he said in his speech on May 1st that "Iraq was a dangerous place and there was hard work to do", and that it was the ship's crew and not the White House that had put up the sign "Mission Accomplished". Yesterday he said: "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff - they weren't that ingenious by the way."
What Mr Bush actually said on the aircraft carrier was, "We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous."
Yesterday he said, "It is dangerous in Iraq because there are some who believe that we are soft, that the will of the United States can be shaken by suiciders." Another reporter asked Mr Bush if he was levelling with the American people on the dangers in occupied Iraq, especially in light of the leaked memo by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with its bleak prediction of "a long hard slog".
"I can't put it any more plainly, Iraq's a dangerous place," Mr Bush replied. "That's levelling".
The questions at the press conference in the White House Rose Garden were more aggressive in tone than those of the immediate pre-war press conference, which was much criticised as too soft on the president.
Yesterday Mr Bush fended off questions about the chaos in Iraq, blaming it on "both Baathists and foreign terrorists" and implying that Syria and Iran were not doing enough to stop infiltrators. He was "working closely" with Iran and Syria.
But, he warned, "We expect them to enforce borders, prevent people from coming across borders if in fact we catch them doing that." He also linked the violence in Iraq to the September 11th attacks on America, saying those behind the suicide bombings had the "same mentality" as those who carried out the attacks on the US. "We're constantly looking at the enemy and adjusting," Mr Bush said, adding, "We're not leaving."
"The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear because they fear a free and peaceful state."