Iraqis turning tide, Bush says

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — President Bush appealed to an increasingly skeptical public and Congress for patience in Iraq, saying Iraqi security forces were achieving growing success in taking over the fight against violent insurgents.

In a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, Bush rejected calls for a quick pullout or a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Yet his contention that the U.S. was making progress in training Iraqi forces fulfills one of the conditions his administration has outlined for starting a draw-down of U.S. forces.

"We will never accept anything less than complete victory," Bush said Wednesday in Annapolis, Md. "Our goal is to train enough Iraq forces so they can carry the fight, and this will take time and patience."

The address was the first in what administration officials said will be a series of speeches to lay out the president's strategy in Iraq leading up to elections there scheduled for Dec. 15. U.S. lawmakers have been pushing the president to give regular progress reports to Congress and the public as polls show support for war is declining.

During his 43-minute speech, Bush acknowledged the national debate over the war.

"Many advocating an artificial timetable for withdrawing our troops are sincere," he said. "But I believe they're sincerely wrong."

The White House also released a 35-page document called "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" that spells out the backbone of the president's plan for Iraq.

"No war has ever been won on a timetable and neither will this one," the strategy paper said. "We expect, but cannot guarantee, that our force posture will change over the next year as the political process consolidates and Iraqi Security Forces grow and gain experience."

The outline, dated November 2005, has been in place since 2003, though it hadn't been released until Wednesday, according to National Security Council spokesman Fred Jones.

Neither the speech nor the strategy paper offered new plans for U.S. involvement in Iraq. Rather, they consolidated the ideas Bush has already has put forward in past remarks.

The document "says the U.S. is still heavily dependent on the competency of the Iraqi government and security forces before we can withdraw our troops, and for restless members of Congress, that explanation probably won't be enough," said Ted Carpenter, vice president of defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, a research group in Washington that generally supports the White House.