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11/21/03 - BUSH IN BRITAIN DISCUSSES IRAQ - 2003-11-21


Britain’s Guardian newspaper has published the results of a survey showing “that public opinion [in Britain] is overwhelmingly pro-American with sixty-two percent of [British] voters believing that the U.S. is ’generally speaking, a force for good, not evil, in the world.’”

The survey was released as President George W. Bush arrived in Britain for a state visit. Referring to U.S.-led coalition efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, President Bush said, “It is not enough to meet the dangers of the world with [United Nations] resolutions. We must meet those dangers with resolve”:

“America and Great Britain have done, and will do, all in their power to prevent the United Nations from solemnly choosing its own irrelevance and inviting the fate of the League of Nations.”

President Bush said the coalition’s decision to remove the Saddam Hussein regime was an appropriate use of force:

“The inhabitants of Iraq’s Baathist hell, with its lavish palaces and its torture chambers, with its massive statues and its mass graves, do not miss their fugitive dictator. They rejoiced at his fall."

The U.S., says President Bush, will not leave Iraq until the mission is completed and Iraqis have regained their sovereignty:

“The failure of democracy in Iraq would throw its people back into misery and turn that country over to terrorists who wish to destroy us.... We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq and pay a bitter cost of casualties and liberate twenty-five million people, only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.”

“Democracy will succeed in Iraq,” said President Bush, “because our will is firm, our word is good, and the Iraqi people will not surrender their freedom."

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