Bush invokes Sept 11 to defend Iraq war

By Tabassum Zakaria

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush launched a counter-offensive against growing public discontent over Iraq on Saturday, when he defended the war as a way of protecting Americans from another September 11 attack, a message he will reinforce when he takes to the road next week.

"Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

"They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war," he said.

Bush next week will speak to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Utah, and meet with members of the Idaho National Guard and the Mountain Home Air Force Base, which played a leading role in the air bombing campaign in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.

The public is showing more discontent with Bush's handling of Iraq, with high-profile protests during his ranch vacation and new poll results showing nearly six in 10 Americans are worrying about the outcome of the war.

"They're trying to get the public's attention again and remind them of the arguments that once worked with the public," Larry Sabato, director of the center for politics at the University of Virginia, said.

Asked whether the United States was meeting its objectives in Iraq, 56 percent of those polled said it was not and 39 percent said it was. The poll is to be published in next month's issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, became a symbol for anti-war protesters after camping near Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch, while he is on vacation, urging the president to bring U.S. troops home.

POLL NUMBERS

"He bottomed out on Iraq even before Cindy Sheehan's protest started. Look at the poll numbers, Americans have been increasingly disaffected," Sabato said.

But there is little that Bush can do after ruling out a withdrawal from Iraq in the near-term, Sabato said. "All he can hope for is that conditions improve in Iraq." Continued ...

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