THE PRESIDENT: Well -- thank you for the follow-up -- nothing has changed in the new room. Anyway -- yes. As I told you last November, right about this time, I was part of that group of Americans who didn't approve of what was taking place in Iraq because it looked like all the efforts we had taken to that point in time were about to fail. In other words, sectarian violence was really raging. And I had a choice to make, and that was to pull back, as some suggested, and hope that the chaos and violence that might occur in the capital would not spill out across the country, or send more troops in to prevent the chaos and violence from happening in the first place -- and that's the decision I made. So it was a realistic appraisal by me.
What's realistic, as well, is to understand the consequences of what will happen if we fail in Iraq. In other words, people aren't just going to be content with driving America out of Iraq. Al Qaeda wants to hurt us here. That's their objective. That's what they would like to do. They have got an ideology that they believe that the world ought to live under, and that one way to help spread that ideology is to harm the American people, harm American interests. The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that's why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.
So I've been realistic about the consequences of failure. I have been realistic about what needs to happen on the ground in order for there to be success. And it's been hard work, and the American people see this hard work. And one of the reasons it is hard work is because on our TV screens are these violent killings, perpetuated by people who have done us harm in the past. And that ought to be a lesson for the American people, to understand that what happens in Iraq and overseas matters to the security of the United States of America.
How in the world did Al Qaeda get such a foothold both in Iraq and our TVs so easily? Ah, the consequences of failure.
Posted by kerry at July 13, 2007 03:50 AM