Bush admits ‘it is bad in Iraq'

WASHINGTON — An impassioned President Bush acknowledged Thursday that “it is bad in Iraq” but reiterated his intention to stay because “victory in Iraq is important” to the Middle East’s stability and America’s security.

The president’s assertion in a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair came a day after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group said a military victory alone was not possible. The Iraq Study Group’s report had a bleak assessment, saying there was “no magic formula” for success and that the situation was “grave and deteriorating.”

Bush and Blair agreed, to a point, but Bush gave no sign that he was budging on a central recommendation of the report: dealing with Iran and Syria over the future of Iraq.

Bush and Blair tried to put Iraq in the context of a greater global struggle on par with both World War II and the Cold War.

Bush said that if the two countries withdrew from Iraq and failed to confront “extremist ideologies” there and elsewhere, “history will look back upon our time with unforgiving clarity” and ask why the United States, Great Britain and other free nations “did not act to preserve the peace.”

Bush said withdrawing while the Iraqi government is unable to sustain itself would assure failure, and that a “failed policy will come to hurt generations of Americans in the future.” He said the “ideological struggle between forces” in Iraq are every bit as momentous as the Cold War.