Bush discusses lengthy U.S. presence in Iraq

Question: You said you listen to members of Congress, and there have been growing calls from some of those members for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- also from his own former subordinates, like U.S. Army Major General Paul Eaton, who described him in a recent editorial as "incompetent and tactically inept."

Do you feel that personally you have ever gotten bad advice on the conduct of the war in Iraq?  And do you believe Rumsfeld should resign?

President Bush: No, I don't believe he should resign.  I think he's done a fine job of not only conducting two battles, Afghanistan and Iraq, but also transforming our military, which has been a very difficult job inside the Pentagon.

Listen, every war plan looks good on paper until you meet the enemy, not just the war plan we executed in Iraq but the war plans that have been executed throughout the history of warfare.  In other words, the enemy changes tactics and we've got to change tactics, too.

And no question that we've had to adjust our tactics on the ground.  And perhaps the clearest example is in the training of Iraqi security forces.

When we got into Iraq, we felt like we needed to train a security force that was capable of defending the country from an outside threat.  And then it became apparent that the insurgents and Zarqawi were able to spread their poison and their violence in a ruthless way. And therefore we had to make sure that the Iraqi forces were able to deal with the internal thereat.

And we adjusted our tactics and started spending a lot more time getting the Iraqis up and running, and then embedding our troops with the Iraqis.

But no question about it, we missed some time as we adjusted our tactics.  We had to change our reconstruction strategy.  You know, we thought it would make sense initially when we went in there to build big, grand projects, which turned out to be targets for the insurgents to blow up.

And a better strategy was to be spending reconstruction money at the local level so that local leaders committed to a peaceful and unified Iraq would benefit.  In other words, people would see tangible benefits from an emerging democracy, and the leaders would be viewed as people helping to improve their lives.

And so this is a war in which we changed tactics.  It's a war in which we've adjusted and learned lessons in the process of the war.

Question: Just after the 2004 election, you seemed -- you claimed a really enviable balance of political capital and a strong mandate.  Would you make that claim today; that you still have that?

President Bush: I'd say I'm spending that capital on the war.

Question: Well, is that costing you elsewhere, then?

President Bush: I don't think so.  I just named an agenda that, over the last 12 months, that would be, I suspect, if looked at objectively, would say, "Well, they got a lot done."  I'd be glad to repeat them if you like, which is...

(Crosstalk)

Question: ... Social Security.

(Laughter)

President Bush: Wait a minute.  Please no hand gestures.

(Laughter)

Social Security -- it didn't get done.  You'll notice it wasn't on the list.

(Laughter)

Let me talk about that if you don't mind.  First of all, Social Security is a really difficult issue for some members of Congress to deal with, because it is fraught with all kind of political peril.

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