Bush leaves Australia early to focus on vision for Iraq

SYDNEY, Australia - President Bush wrapped up his participation at an Asia-Pacific summit yesterday and prepared for a renewed fight with the Democratic-run Congress over the future of the U.S. involvement in Iraq.

He plans to deliver a nationally televised address this week to "lay out a vision" of the U.S. role. In his weekly radio address yesterday, Bush set the stage for tomorrow's congressional testimony by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq.

In the radio talk, recorded before he headed back to the United States, Bush recounted his Labor Day trip to Iraq's Anbar Province to visit U.S. troops and "see with my own eyes the remarkable changes they are making possible."

Sunni tribal leaders, working with Iraqi and U.S. forces, helped drive out al-Qaeda fighters, Bush said.

"The level of violence is down. Local governments are meeting again. Young Sunnis are joining the police and army. And normal life is returning," the president said.

"Success in Anbar is critical to the democratic future of Iraq and to the war on terror," he said.

The Senate's top Democrat contended in his party's weekly radio address that the president had misled the country into "an ill-planned war in Iraq" before finishing the job of destroying al-Qaeda.

The U.S. military is not to blame for setbacks in the war, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada said.

"These are President Bush's failures - and it is long past time for him to change his flawed policies," he said.

Previewing his national address, Bush said he would "lay out a vision for future involvement in Iraq - one that I believe the American people and their elected leaders of both parties can support. By coming together on the way forward, we will strengthen Iraq's democracy, deal a blow to our enemies, secure interests in the Middle East, and make our nation safer."

Anticipating Petraeus' testimony to Congress, Reid said he expected the commander's assessment would "pass through the White House spin machine, where facts are often ignored or twisted, and intelligence is cherry-picked."

Bush left Sydney after the first formal session of this year's meeting of Pacific Rim leaders. He cut his visit short to return home because of the busy week on Iraq awaiting him. But the president had arrived in Australia earlier than originally scheduled and spent the last four days meeting with other leaders from the region.

A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives-packed Mercedes near a row of stores in Baghdad's Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City yesterday, killing at least 15 people, police and hospital officials said.

The attack in the eastern Baghdad enclave happened as at least 36 other people were killed or found dead in Iraq, including four who died in a bombing of an outdoor market in the Shiite holy city of Kufa.

The British military, meanwhile, said 500 troops would be withdrawn from Iraq in coming months as part of its planned reduction in forces as Iraqis assume control of their own security in southern Iraq. The withdrawals will reduce the British force in Iraq to 5,000, based around Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The U.S. military announced the Army's first use of a drone aircraft to kill enemy fighters in Iraq. The Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, dropped a precision bomb on two suspected insurgents believed to be preparing to plant roadside bombs on Sept. 1 near Qarraya, 180 miles northwest of Baghdad.

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