WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, OHIO — President Bush said Thursday that the yearlong increased U.S. troop deployment in Iraq had allowed the country to "restart political and economic life" and take on a greater role in its own reconstruction while building a modern democracy on "the rubble of three decades of tyranny."
But he made clear his readiness to delay the withdrawal of U.S. forces, saying that as he considers his next steps, he will remember that "the progress in Iraq is real; it's substantive -- but it is reversible."
And in an apparent broadside at political critics who he said had refused to acknowledge the achievements he sees, the president said that "now that political progress is picking up, they're looking for a new reason" to call for retreat.
Accusing some members of Congress of "hectoring" Iraqi leaders, he said: "They claim that our strategic interest is elsewhere, and that if we would just get out of Iraq, we could focus on the battles that really matter. . . .
"If America's strategic interests are not in Iraq . . . then where are they?" he asked.
The speech was Bush's third of three over the last three weeks intended to present a broad look at U.S. policy in Iraq, the course of the war and the conditions on the ground five years after the U.S. invaded to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein.
He spoke to about 1,000 people, many of them Air Force personnel, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, on the outskirts of Dayton. He stood between an F-86 of Korean War vintage and a current fighter jet, the F-22, with a Predator drone displayed from the ceiling of the museum hangar and a B-52 a menacing presence to the side.
Critics challenged his assessment, contending that it was overly rosy and failed to present a course that would lead to withdrawal.
Steven A. Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a telephone interview that although the examples of progress Bush cited were accurate, the new Iraqi laws the president cited either "fall short or there are loopholes."
And, citing new fighting across the country as an "unraveling of the security situation," he said it was "tough to talk about progress one day after 100 people were killed in the worst violence in months."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a written statement that Bush had "failed to give the American people a clear indication" that a plan for success was any closer now than in the last five years.
