'I'm not going to change', says Bush

By RUPERT CORNWELL

"I'm not going to change." With those five short words, President George W. Bush has set out his stall for the forthcoming election that suddenly looks a lot trickier than a month ago.

And America and the world have been served notice: anyone who expects new circumstances to produce a new Bush is mistaken.

Yesterday's hour-long interview with Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press programme was the most sustained media grilling Bush has undergone since he took office, a rare occasion in which a ducked question did not automatically pass by unchallenged.

Mostly, he was on the defensive. Russert allowed him little opportunity for the folksy rambles he uses to extricate himself from a corner. Bush's most frequent expression was a tight-lipped smile. As usual, he often groped for words.

None too subtly, he shifted his rationale for the invasion of Iraq, conceding that weapons of mass destruction might not exist, though still holding open the possibility that they might be found or have been moved to another country.

But at bottom it was the familiar George Bush, stubborn, unyielding and utterly convinced of the rightness of his cause.

Saddam Hussein, he insisted, had the capacity to develop weapons, if not the weapons themselves - and no responsible American President could rely on the word of a "madman" who had used weapons of mass destruction in the past and might now give them to terrorists.

"He had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon," Bush said.

"We thought he had weapons. The international community thought he had weapons.

"But he had the capacity to make a weapon and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network. He could even have developed a nuclear weapon."

The war, he maintained, had been justified by the intelligence he had received.

Nor, despite the failure so far to find a single chemical, biological, let alone nuclear, weapon, was the job of the CIA director in jeopardy.

On the economy it was the same story. Even conservatives in his own party have criticised Bush for fiscal recklessness in permitting the federal deficit to soar to US$521 billion ($749 billion) this year compared with the US$281 billion surplus bequeathed by Bill Clinton in 2001.

But an unapologetic Bush insisted the tax cuts, which have largely caused the deficits, were justified.

"You've got to cut taxes to create jobs," he said, even though 2.2 million jobs have been lost during his presidency.

He blamed the deficits on the "terrible stress" brought on by recession, a tumbling stock market and, of course, the terrorist attacks of September 11.

In fact, Bush maintained, the economy was once more in fine fettle and starting to create jobs.

But just as the Iraq war was, in his words, a war of necessity, not of choice, the same applied to the interview itself. An unaccustomed fear gnaws the White House that this President might be going the way of his father, defeated after a single term. Bush enjoys a press conference as much as a cat enjoys a cold bath.

But his handlers decided it was essential to regain a political initiative suddenly seized by his opponents in this invigorating Democratic presidential season.

Bush, it should be said, still has a huge amount going for him: a largely untapped US$150 million campaign war chest, a slowly improving economy and the historical precedent that no incumbent without a primary challenger has been defeated. But this has been a miserable fortnight.

His State of the Union speech, normally a gift election-year platform for an incumbent, was judged a failure even by supporters. Elements in his own party have attacked his supply-side economics.

His Vice-President, Dick Cheney, with his Halliburton connections and refusal to admit even the tiniest misjudgment in Iraq, looks more of an embarrassment every day.

Now, it is whispered, senior Cheney aides could face indictments arising from the investigation into the "outing" of the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson - the uranium from Africa whistleblower - as a CIA agent. All of this, added to the weapons of mass destruction debacle, puts at risk Bush's electoral trump cards, credibility and straight talking - and the polls are telling him so.

A Newsweek survey yesterday finds his overall approval rating has dropped to 48 per cent, below the 50 per cent mark for the first time, and at almost exactly the level of his father at the same point in his presidency. The same poll found John Kerry, the Democratic front-runner, defeating Bush 50-45 per cent if the election were held now.

To all these difficulties, Bush's reply was blunt. He portrayed himself as a man not afraid to make the toughest choices.

"I'm a war president," he said. "I make decisions in the Oval Office with war on my mind."

Yes, he conceded: "I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons" - though of course none had been found. But David Kay, the US former chief weapons inspector, "found the capacity to produce weapons ... Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world". America "can't stand by and hope for the best with a madman".

To the families of the dead and wounded American soldiers in Iraq, his message was that their sacrifice had been worth it.

The election campaign has begun, and Bush will fight it as he has run the country for the past 37 months.

"Divisive - who, me?" he said. "I don't know why I'm perceived as a divider, I'm working hard to unite the country."

To Democrats and others he said: "I'm not going to lose. I'm going to lead this world to more peace and freedom. I've shown the people I can lead and make big decisions when the times are tough."

In short, take me or leave me, I'm not going to change.

- INDEPENDENT

George Bush, in his own words

Oct 2002: "The Iraqi regime ... possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

March 2003: "Intelligence gathered by this and other Governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

April 2003: "Perhaps he [Saddam] destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some ... it's going to take time to find them."

June 2003: "We've discovered a weapons system - biological labs that Iraq denied she had and labs that were prohibited under the UN resolutions."

September 2003: "We acted in Iraq, where the former regime sponsored terror, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, and for 12 years defied the clear demands of the United Nations Security Council."

January: "There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a grave and gathering threat to America and the world.

"And I say that based upon intelligence that I saw prior to the decision to go into Iraq, and I say that based upon what I know today. And the world is better off without him."

February 2: "What we don't know yet is what we thought, and what the Iraqi Survey Group has found, and we want to look at that."

February 8: "I think, if I might remind you that in my language I called it a grave and gathering threat, but I don't want to get into word contests. But what I do want to share with you is my sentiment at the time. There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America.

"Well, because he had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon. We thought he had weapons. The international community thought he had weapons.

"But he had the capacity to make a weapon and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network."

Source: REUTERS

Transcript from NBC television programme Meet the Press:

Interview with George W Bush