Bush Presses Iraq Campaign While Honoring Veterans

Shadowed by rain clouds and the threat of war, President Bush paid homage to American veterans Monday as he pressed his campaign against Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein.

“We will not permit a dictator who has used weapons of mass destruction to threaten America with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons,” the president said during Veterans Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. “This great nation will not live at the mercy of any foreign plot or power.”

Bush’s anti-Iraq campaign got two big boosts last week -- one from the American electorate, which in several key states voted with a strong preference for his party’s candidates, and one from the U.N. Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution calling on Iraq to disarm or face the use of force.

Neither victory seemed to lower the octane in the president’s rhetoric.

At another ceremony honoring veterans -- this one a reception in the White House’s East Room -- Bush linked the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with his current focus on Iraq.

“We will not forget the harm that was done to us. We will not be distracted from the task before us,” Bush said. “No enemy that threatens our security or endangers our people will escape the patient justice and the overwhelming power of the United States of America.”

Analysts say it is important for the president to keep up the sharp language, both to keep the American people and the United Nations behind him and to keep the pressure on the Iraqi president.

“The audience that matters is Iraq, and softening the rhetoric is not a way to force Iraq to comply” with the Security Council resolution, said Anthony Cordesman, a security policy expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Cordesman and other analysts say they expect the White House to keep the volume on Iraq high in the coming weeks as Hussein decides whether and how fully to cooperate with a new round of weapons inspections.

“This nation loves peace. We work and sacrifice for peace,” Bush said at the national cemetery. “Yet America must always be prepared to confront and defeat the enemies of human freedom. And when war is forced upon us, we will see it through to victory.”

Some Security Council members had expressed dismay about Bush’s tough talk on Iraq, which they considered “belligerent, not to say bullying toward the U.N.,” said David Malone, a former Canadian ambassador to the world body and now president of the International Peace Academy in New York.

At the same time, he said, the U.S. negotiated with members of the Security Council in good faith over the new resolution and made important compromises. The lesson the other members learned is that the tone of Bush’s rhetoric does not always match the tenor of his policy.

“Rightly or wrongly, there’s going to be a tendency around the world to take the president’s rhetoric with a grain of salt,” Malone said.

In fact, Malone added, heated language from the White House may promote the U.N. approach to the Iraq crisis, which puts weapons inspections ahead of military confrontation.

Before his other appearances Monday, Bush made a surprise visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Attracting astonished stares from small clusters of early morning visitors, the president placed a small American flag at the base of the black marble wall etched with the names of more than 58,000 U.S. military personnel killed or missing in the conflict.

“Thank you for your service,” he told one startled veteran. “God bless you,” Bush called out to the crowd, shaking hands and scanning the mounds of wreaths placed at the memorial.