US: President Bush yesterday laid new emphasis on a strategic US priority in the Middle East which neo-conservatives in Washington have for years been pressing as a reason to invade Iraq outside of the issue of weapons of mass destruction.
"A free and secure Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have enormous historical impact," Mr Bush said in the Oval Office, and the US would "stay the course" to achieve the objective of a "peaceful Iraq".
As far back as 1998, Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defence Secretary Mr Paul Wolfowitz and Defence department adviser Richard Perle called on the US to get rid of Saddam Hussein so as to increase the potential for spreading democracy to adjoining states and provide greater security for Israel.
They were three of 18 signatories to a "manifesto" calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in the Weekly Standard, a publication backed by Rupert Murdoch and edited by leading neo-conservative intellectual Billy Kristol that is now hugely influential with policy-makers in the Bush administration.
After 9/11 President Bush made the case for war against Iraq primarily on the basis of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, none of which have been found. A Senate report to be published soon is said to be scathing about CIA intelligence on the presence of unconventional weapons.
Mr Bush's comments came after an early-morning briefing by the US administrator in Iraq, Mr Paul Bremer, and Mr Rumsfeld on the latest violence in Iraq, which included a mortar attack on the heart of the US administration in Baghdad and yesterday's five car bombings.
"The best way to describe the people who are conducting these attacks are cold-blooded killers, terrorists," Mr Bush said. "And the best way to find them is to work with the Iraqi people to ferret them out and go get them. And that's exactly what we discussed."
He said the more progress the US made on the ground and the more free the Iraqis became, "the more desperate these killers become, because they can't stand the thought of a free society. They hate freedom. They love terror. They love to try to create fear and chaos. And what we're determined in this administration is not to be intimidated by these killers. As a matter of fact, we're even more determined to work with the Iraqi people to create the conditions of freedom and peace, because it's in our national interest we do so.
"It's in the interest of long-term peace in the world that we work for a free and secure and peaceful Iraq. A free and secure Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have enormous historical impact."
Mr Bush added that "the more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react. And our job is to find them and bring them to justice." He said the US government was determined to heed the call of Iraqis for a society in which their children could go to school, in which they could get good health care and could live a peaceful life.
Mr Bremer said that "a lot of wonderful things" had happened in Iraq since July. "We have a cabinet now, with ministers actually conducting affairs of state. We have met all of our goals in restoring essential services. All the schools and hospitals are open. Electricity is back at pre-war levels. We're moving ahead with our plan. We'll have rough days, such as we've had the last couple of days. But the overall thrust is in the right direction, and the good days outnumber the bad days, and that's the thing you need to keep in perspective."
The violence at the weekend was widely interpreted as a major setback for US efforts to get reconstruction under way in Iraq with international help.
Coming on the first day of Ramadan, some commentators compared it to the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War in 1968, when attacks were launched against US forces and their Vietnamese allies in major cities on the first day of a religious holiday.