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Poll won't influence troops
11/03/2008 21:30 - (SA)
Nashville - US President George W Bush on Tuesday told a conservative Christian audience that the November elections would not decide the pace of US troop withdrawals from Iraq.
"I want to assure you - just like I assure military families and the troops - that the politics of 2008 is not going to enter into my calculation - it is the peace of years to come that will enter into my calculation," he vowed.
Bush's Democratic foes hope to harness deep US public anger at the war - now on the eve of entering its sixth year - to recapture the White House and widen their majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.
The US president, his approval ratings slumped at near-record lows, pointed to US troop decreases scheduled to occur by July and denied that political pressure was playing any role in US force levels in war-torn Iraq.
'Believe the surge is working'
"They're not coming home based upon defeat, or based upon opinion polls, or based upon focus groups, or based upon politics...they're coming home because we're successful," he said, to thunderous applause.
Bush's speech to the National Religious Broadcasters group had been billed as the first in a public relations offensive leading up to an early April progress report from the top US military and diplomatic officials in Iraq.
Bush ordered about 30 000 more US forces to Iraq in January 2007 in an escalation widely known as a military "surge."
"I strongly believe the surge is working and so do the Iraqis," he said, pointing to lower rates of sectarian killings and setbacks for members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network.
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