Bush acknowledges toll war taking on military
President offers Marines sober assessment of conflict's progress
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 8, 2004
Camp Pendleton -- On a gray wintry morning at this huge Southern California Marine base, President Bush offered an unusually sober assessment Tuesday of the war in Iraq, acknowledging that the insurgency is getting worse, that newly trained Iraqi soldiers are fighting poorly at times and that the war's casualties are taking a heavy toll on military families.
Bush's 30-minute address to an estimated 7,000 Marines on a damp and chilly football field, flanked by two armored vehicles with mounted guns, was spirited at times as he described American successes in the war. The troops, in camouflage uniforms, some bearing wounds from duty in Iraq, responded with deep-throated cheers.
After noting that Afghanistan has recently held elections, Bush recounted the quick victory of the United States forces in seizing Baghdad and added, "You drove Saddam Hussein from his palace into a spider hole. And now he sits in an Iraqi prison awaiting justice."
But for a president who generally has been upbeat in his public remarks on Iraq -- most notably when, on an aircraft carrier just offshore here in May 2003, he stood under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished" and claimed that principal combat operations had ended -- the speech Tuesday struck a stark counterpoint.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/08/MNGPBA8DPH1.DTL
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