Bush: U.S.-Trained Iraqi Troops Not Ready Yet

Acknowledging new setbacks in Iraq, President Bush said today that the Iraqi security forces being trained by the United States and its allies were not in all cases ready to fight, and that bombers were “effective propaganda tools.”

Speaking at an end-of-the-year news conference, his second since he was reelected, the president said that the failure of Iraqi troops to stand firm on the battlefield was “unacceptable,” but that in recent battles in Fallouja and Najaf, other units “did their duty.”

“I would call the results mixed,” the president said, in a statement that was strikingly devoid of the optimism he generally expresses about conditions in Iraq.

But, he said, “the Iraqi force is not ready to fight.”

He spoke on a morning after a series of attacks over the weekend targeted election officials in an apparent effort to disrupt momentum toward Iraqi elections at the end of January.

“No question about it. The bombers are having an effect,” Bush said.

The president offered a show of strong confidence in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has been sharply criticized in recent days by a number of Republicans, among them Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

“He’s done a fine job and I look forward to working with him,” the president said. As the criticism began several weeks ago amid changes being announced in Bush’s Cabinet, White House officials went out of their way to publicize a meeting Bush held with Rumsfeld at which the Pentagon chief was asked to remain in his post.

As for reports that the defense secretary had not personally signed letters of condolence to the families of troops killed in Iraq, the president said Rumsfeld’s “demeanor is rough and gruff,” but “I know how much he cares for the troops.”

Asked about the continuing failure of U.S. troops to capture Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader, Bush said “we’ll stay on the hunt.” He said that if he had to guess, he would guess that bin Laden remains holed up along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He added, however, that bin Laden’s organization had been seriously damaged by the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan over the past three years and efforts to round up Al Qaeda figures elsewhere, too.

The president defended the United States’ handling of prisoners held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arguing that they had been “scooped up” from battlefields while seeking “to kill American troops.”

Critics have said that the treatment of the prisoners has denied them basic rights and has damaged the United States’ reputation.