Bush: Sorry, but no apology
2004-04-14 08:04
Washington - President George W Bush had no apologies to make during his prime-time press conference, and he was almost apologetic about it.
Despite the failures highlighted in the government's pre-September 11 intelligence operations, despite the futile search to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and all the recent violence there, Bush came up empty on Tuesday when asked - repeatedly - if he'd made mistakes.
"I'm sure something will pop into my head here," he said in just the third evening press conference of his presidency. "I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have."
But "maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."
He hemmed. He hawed. He allowed that "hindsight's easy" and - armed with that rear-view mirror - he would have liked to have had a Homeland Security Department and a Patriot Act before the terrorists struck.
"We weren't on a war footing," he said, "and yet the enemy was at war with us."
It's been tough
To be sure, Bush acknowledged the difficulties of recent weeks in Iraq, the horrible scenes of dead bodies on television and the sense that the war has dragged on for a long time. "It's been really tough for the families," he said. "It's been tough on this administration."
He acknowledged he has asked himself repeatedly whether his administration could have done anything to stop the September 11, 2001, attacks. He did not directly answer his own question, saying only that if he'd had an inkling about what was to happen, he would have done anything to head it off.
He said the Iraq war was justified, for America's sake and for the Iraqi people's. "Of course, I want to know why we haven't found a weapon yet," he said. "But I still know Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the world is better off without Saddam Hussein."
American Revolution
On the protracted struggle against insurgents trying to drive the Americans out, Bush said liberty doesn't come easily, and invoked the American Revolution: "I mean, we had a little trouble in our own country achieving freedom."
He was not about to second-guess his decisions, but rather to leave that job to the historians.
"I would've gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would've called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein."
And there was to be no apology for what the government did and did not do in the months before the terrorist attacks, when the air was thick with signs of trouble that his administration says were too vague to act on.
"Here's what I feel about that," he said. "The person responsible for the attacks was Osama bin Laden. That's who's responsible for killing Americans. And that's why we will stay on the offence until we bring people to justice."
- AP