Officially Cautious but Privately Delighted

President Bush bid farewell to the president of Slovakia and left the Oval Office. He walked over to a TV set near his private secretary’s desk and watched the images: pieces of a statue of Saddam Hussein dragged through the streets of Baghdad by jubilant Iraqis.

“They got it down,” the president said.

Aides and visitors described the president as upbeat after the scenes of rejoicing in the Iraqi capital. But for the most part, signs of delight in the White House slipped out only in snatches.

The official line: No gloating.

“The war is not over,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said at the daily briefing, in tones even more measured than usual. “We still need to be cautious because we still have armed forces in harm’s way.”

But the mood in the White House, and elsewhere in the administration, was clearly buoyant.

“We were watching this moment with everyone else,” an administration official said. “Everyone realizes this was an extraordinary moment. But everyone also recognizes that there’s a lot more left to be done.”

One of the few snatches of public jubilation came from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who described the scenes in Baghdad as “breathtaking.”

“Watching them, one cannot help but think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain,” he said.

A few minutes later, asked about the Berlin Wall comparison, the White House primly declined to echo Rumsfeld’s sentiments.

“The president continues to urge caution, and so I’m not going to go beyond what I have said,” Fleischer said. “I think historians will make judgments about what today means.”

For his part, the president kept a very low profile Wednesday, making no public comments.

He started his day at a breakfast with congressional leaders, where he said his heart and thoughts were with the fallen soldiers in Iraq. After that, in an unusual departure, the rush of news from Iraq eclipsed nearly all discussion of legislative affairs by the leaders -- even of the president’s proposed tax cuts and budget, which were coming to a head later in the day.

Bush was then in meetings for most of the morning. He had briefings from the CIA and the FBI, and a lengthy meeting with his National Security Council and a one-on-one with Rumsfeld.

He was fully informed about events, aides said, but had no chance to see them with his own eyes until 10:45 a.m.

He stood in front of the television set and watched as a U.S. armored recovery vehicle maneuvered a noose around the neck of Hussein’s statue in the center of Baghdad and prepared to pull.

His viewing was cut short; the Slovak president, Rudolf Schuster, was waiting, so Bush ducked back into the Oval Office. When Schuster left at 11:20, the first thing Bush did was go back to his secretary’s TV to check on the fate of the statue. It had come down.

“The president is heartened by what he has seen on the streets of Baghdad because he knows it means that people are becoming free and that the Iraqi people deserve their place and freedom just like everybody else,” Fleischer said later.

No matter how strong those feelings, the president has no intention of going public with them anytime soon. There are no immediate plans for a presidential address to the nation.

“I assure you, this president, as he has done repeatedly throughout this, will speak out,” Fleischer said. “But I urge you just to keep today in context.”