Bush in Iraq defends the war but says it's 'not over'

The unannounced visit, which lasted about eight hours, came 37 days before Bush hands power to President-elect Barack Obama, who is expected to oversee the departure of most if not all of the nearly 150,000 American troops in Iraq.

He later flew to Afghanistan and attended a rally of U.S. and allied soldiers at Bagram Air Base. He told them that they were making "hopeful gains" in a country where they are battling a growing insurgency. Thousands more U.S. troops are likely to be send to Afghanistan next year to join about 30,000 already there.

In a final speech in Iraq to cheering U.S. forces in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces, Bush said his decision to bolster the American troop presence early last year to quell sectarian bloodshed was "one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military."

"Thanks to you, the Iraq we're standing in today is dramatically freer, dramatically safer and dramatically better than the Iraq we found eight years ago," he said before boarding Air Force One for the flight home.

But in a sign of the lingering animosity many Iraqis have toward Bush, and in a moment that undercut White House hopes of an enthusiastic, glitch-free visit to a relatively quiet nation, an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes across the room at Bush and called him a "dog," the height of insults in the Arab world. The shoes slammed into the wall behind Bush and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who proceeded to take questions from other journalists after the assailant was wrestled to the ground and taken away.

The president, upon landing at Baghdad's airport, was greeted by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq. Bush then threw himself into a flurry of meetings with Iraqi officials, including President Jalal Talabani, Vice Presidents Adel Abdul Mehdi and Tariq Hashimi, and Maliki.

"The work hasn't been easy, but it's been necessary," Bush said after his meeting with Talabani, Mehdi and Hashimi.

Bush said his visit was in part "to herald the passage" of a Status of Forces Agreement for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011 and an accompanying accord outlining future U.S.-Iraqi relations.