WASHINGTON – President Bush accepted responsibility on Wednesday for going to war with faulty intelligence, but firmly defended a decision that has deeply divided the country. “We cannot and will not leave Iraq until victory is achieved,” he said. The president said that Thursday’s parliamentary elections in Iraq are a watershed moment that will inspire democracy across the Middle East. But with public opinion still running against his mission, Bush was again left defending his decision to go to war nearly three years ago.

“It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq,” the president told a foreign policy forum on the eve of elections to establish Iraq’s first permanent, democratically elected government. “And I’m also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we’re doing just that.”

“We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of brutal dictator,” Bush said. “It is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in his place.

“My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power,” the president told the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

As he usually does, Bush asserted that the Iraq of the future, with a functioning democracy and thriving economy, would be a model for other nations in the turbulent Middle East. But he added a specific reference to the inspiration that a free Iraq could provide to reformers in the region’s two governments most hostile to the United States _ Syria and Iran.

The president is banking on a successful election to signal that his war plan is working. If the voting establishes a successful government, it eventually could lead to the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The president could use some more good news in Iraq.With the violence showing no sign of waning, most Americans are unhappy with his handling of the war and some lawmakers are questioning how long the troops should stay.

I agree, The president and the rest of the citizens of this country could use some more good news from Iraq. How about you, author of this AP article, inform us of the good news that instead has been neglected for the past two years! Why is it I have to go to websites like MichelleMulkin.com and Drudgereport.com to find articles about the good things that we are doing for Iraq’s future and our own?