Bush Delivers the News -- With a Sobering Warning

It was -- or should have been -- a moment of triumph. But when President Bush announced Thursday that U.S. forces had killed Abu Musab Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, his tone was noticeably reserved. He made no broad claims of victory. Instead, he warned of more fighting ahead.

“Zarqawi is dead, but the difficult and necessary mission in Iraq continues,” Bush said in a six-minute statement from the White House Rose Garden.

With public support for the war at an ebb, Bush and his aides face a complex challenge: They want to convey that success in Iraq is within reach, but they also want to avoid suggesting that victory is right around the corner -- both to preserve their credibility and to forestall public pressure for troop withdrawal.

In earlier moments of success -- the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 and the capture of Saddam Hussein that December -- Bush and his aides allowed themselves public exuberance.

But those advances were followed by unexpected reverses, and for more than a year the White House has sought to send a measured message: The war is progressing, but no one should expect early or easy success.

“It is about ensuring that our rhetoric matches what the public sees happening every day in Iraq,” a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal deliberations.

“It’s a tough balancing act,” he said. “But the public will be more receptive to believing the good news if they believe you are also providing the whole story, including the bad news.”

Last year, for example, when Vice President Dick Cheney told an interviewer that the Iraqi insurgency was in its “last throes,” aides were privately aghast -- that was “off message.” On Thursday, by contrast, officials stuck to a script that barely noted the importance of defeating Zarqawi before warning of the challenges ahead.

“It is a big deal,” a senior Defense Department official said, also seeking anonymity. “But the American public [and] the Iraqis shouldn’t take it to mean everything will be perfect. The killings will not stop. The bombs will not stop.”

White House spokesman Tony Snow suggested that Bush was frustrated by Iraqi insurgents’ ability to influence public opinion.

“You know, in previous wars you’d win a battle, and you’d know you won a battle,” Snow said Bush told aides Thursday. “In this war, we can win on the ground every day, but as long as terrorists continue to have isolated acts of violence that capture attention, and in some cases capture fears, they win.”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, said Bush’s caution was partly the product of experience.

“In the past, when they’ve had good news -- the capture of Saddam Hussein, the elections -- within 10 days or so, they’ve had bad news on its heels,” she said. “That’s strategic on the part of the other side; they like to strike back to make the point that they’re still there. So Bush has no choice.”

But there is a broader strategy in Bush’s warnings, said Duke University’s Christopher Gelpi, a public opinion scholar who has advised the Bush White House. “Politicians are generally judged relative to expectations,” Gelpi said. “If he sets the bar too high, he sets himself up for failure.”

Bush and his aides have worked to lower expectations for some time.

At a news conference in March, Bush said the duration of the U.S. military presence in Iraq would be up to “future presidents and future governments of Iraq,” implying that U.S. troops would remain in the country after his presidency ended in 2009.

This week, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was asked how long the war would last, he replied: “Insurgencies ... can last six, eight, 10, 12, 14 years, and they end up being dealt with by the government and the people of that country. What we want to do is get them through a period so that they have the ability to do that.”

The administration has also faced a challenge of managing public expectations that some of the estimated 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq could be withdrawn this year.

At the beginning of the year, some Pentagon officials told reporters that U.S. forces in Iraq might be reduced by 10,000 or more. But after an upsurge in sectarian violence, the drawdown was quietly deferred -- and now, officials say, it is unlikely to happen this year.

The White House official noted that Bush and his senior aides were careful never to dangle the prospect of troop reductions before the public.

“People were speculating based on normal planning by DoD,” he said. “We’ve tried to be consistent about troop levels.”

Snow said Thursday that when Bush and his top aides met at Camp David next week, troop withdrawals would not be on the table.

“The ultimate objective is for the Iraqis to take full responsibility and for the Americans to come home,” he said. “But there is certainly no timetable, and that’s not going to be part of the discussion.”

Public support for the war has declined steadily since 2004 but may have stabilized slightly in recent months. In a Times/Bloomberg poll in April, 58% said they believed the situation in Iraq had not been worth going to war -- a record high. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll this week found a similar 59% said the war had been a mistake.

But that high level of disaffection with the war has not translated into public pressure for an immediate withdrawal of troops, polls have found.

“People worry that it might get worse if we get out,” Jamieson explained. “The default position is to say, ‘Maybe we’d better stay until we figure it out.’ ”

“There is a core of support for the president, but there is a shakiness to public opinion,” said Montague Kern, a scholar at Rutgers University. “The White House wants to project the idea that it is on a steady course, rather than overstating what it can do.... [Bush] can’t really come on strong because things are so fragile in Iraq.”

Bush’s announcement of Zarqawi’s death came more than 10 hours after he learned that the terrorist’s body had been definitively identified. Aides said the delay was to let Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki make the announcement in Baghdad first.

On Wednesday afternoon, Snow said, national security advisor Stephen Hadley told Bush that “there had been a strike in Baqubah and they thought that they had gotten al-Zarqawi.”

“That would be a good thing,” Bush replied, according to his spokesman.

But confirmation that Zarqawi had been killed did not reach the White House until 9:10 p.m. Wednesday, 4:10 a.m. in Iraq -- too late to make a public announcement in Baghdad.

After Maliki made his announcement, Bush spoke in the Rose Garden, saying U.S. forces had “delivered justice to the most-wanted terrorist in Iraq.”

“Zarqawi’s death is a severe blow to al Qaeda,” Bush said. “It’s a victory in the global war on terror, and it is an opportunity for Iraq’s new government to turn the tide of this struggle.”

Times staff writer Julian E. Barnes in Washington contributed to this report.