Bush Insists That U.S. Troops Will Stay in Iraq
���� By Elisabeth Bumiller and Douglas Jehl
���� New York Times
���� Tuesday 18 November 2003
���� President Bush said emphatically on Monday that the United States would not leave Iraq even though the White House had decided to speed the transfer of American civilian authority to a new government in Baghdad.
���� "I assured these five women that America wasn't leaving," Mr. Bush told reporters at the end of a meeting with a group of leading Iraqi women in the Oval Office. "When they hear me say, `We're staying,' that means we're staying."
���� Mr. Bush's comments were his most explicit commitment to date to keep American troops in Iraq, but he did not say how long they would stay, or how many would remain. For now, the Pentagon has plans to reduce total American forces in Iraq to about 105,000 troops next year from the 130,000 that are there now. The White House has decided to try to hold elections in Iraq in the first half of next year, which would lead to a provisional Iraqi government.
���� "The political process is moving on," Mr. Bush said. "The Iraqi people are plenty capable of governing themselves." Even so, he said, "we will continue to work with the Iraqi people to secure" the country. "We fully recognize that Iraq has become a new front on the war on terror, and that there are disgruntled Baathists, as well as fedayeen fighters and mujahedeen types and Al Qaeda types that want to test the will of the civilized world there," he added.
���� Mr. Bush made his comments on the same day that the C.I.A. said it had been unable to determine the authenticity of a new audiotape purporting to carry a message from Saddam Hussein.
���� "The quality of the recording was poor, and after an extensive technical analysis it is inconclusive as to whether or not it is the voice of Saddam Hussein," a C.I.A. spokesman said of the tape, which was broadcast on the Arabic-language television network Al Arabiya.
���� In the 14-minute tape, the speaker said the United States military forces now occupying Iraq would "only reap disappointment with more and more American lives lost." Iraqis who heard the message said the voice sounded like Mr. Hussein's and used a similar oratorical style.
���� An earlier tape, broadcast in September, was determined by the C.I.A. to "probably" contain the voice of Mr. Hussein. But government officials familiar with the latest review said the poor quality of the latest recording had made it impossible for intelligence analysts to reach any kind of solid verdict.
���� President Bush has said he regards the latest recording as "propaganda" whether or not it is authentic. In a television interview broadcast in the United States on Monday, L. Paul Bremer III, the top American official in Iraq, dismissed Mr. Hussein as nothing more than a "voice in the wilderness."
