Sticking To His Guns

One week into the war, the Commander in Chief was on edge. Appearing before reporters with British Prime Minister Tony Blair last Thursday, George W. Bush let loose a double dose of presidential petulance. He fidgeted, he frowned, and he scowled at questioners. At one point Bush spoke over Blair as the Prime Minister tried to answer a question. Bush's temper had grown short, aides said, because doubts about the war's progress were growing just when Bush was trying to get out a message of resolve. Reports of Iraqi irregular forces harassing U.S. troops up and down the road to Baghdad--faking surrenders, springing ambushes, firing from commuter buses--had not made him rethink his war. What the President wondered about instead was his message. Why wasn't it getting through? He asked his aides what had become of all the leaflets being dropped on the Iraqi people and the radio messages beamed their way urging them not to fight for a dying regime. Did the Iraqis understand that Bush, unlike his father, would not relent until Saddam Hussein was dead or captured? Said an aide, "There is this concern that [the Iraqis] think we won't finish the job."

With each new report of an atrocity by the Iraqi regime--a woman hanged for waving at a coalition soldier, a nine-year-old boy shot because his family refused to cooperate with Saddam's forces--the President grew more anxious to repeat his message. "Resolve," said a senior Bush aide. "That's what people who have loved ones who are POWs want to hear. That's what the guys in the field who are fighting this thing want to hear. And he is going to hammer it home and hammer it home and hammer it home." So when Bush was finally asked at the press conference whether the war would "last months, not weeks," he could barely wait for the question to be completed. "However long it takes to win," he shot back. Moments later he repeated the pledge, slowing his words for emphasis. "However. Long. It takes."

It was a revealing moment. Clearly Bush meant to remind the world of his determination to finish off Saddam's regime, but his impatient tone simultaneously underscored that the task was proving more difficult than many had anticipated. The allied wave of steel pushing into Iraq had been slowed by sandstorms and guerrilla attacks. Civilian casualties were adding up. Having apparently survived the U.S.'s first-day attempt to kill him, Saddam seemed to be in command.