'Why did you really want to go to war?'

US President George W Bush was given a grilling by a veteran journalist who asked him bluntly for his reasons to invade Iraq.

The president got defensive, stammered and worked around his words to say that he went to Iraq to flush out the terrorists who attacked his country.

However seeing him on telly telling that did not look convincing at all to me.

He also denied that Iraq was heading into a civil war but admitted that there is sectarian violence.

And he blamed the enemy (the terrorists) for the violence and somehow ironically said that the terrorists are:

“…tough-minded. They like to kill. There's going to be more tough fighting ahead.”

And he claimed that his government and troops were making progress because:

“we've got a strategy for victory.”

Below is an excerpt of the interesting Q&A with the president:


QUESTION:

I'd like to ask you, Mr. President _ your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime.

Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, your Cabinet officers, former Cabinet officers, intelligence people and so forth _ but what's your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil, the quest for oil. It hasn't been Israel or anything else. What was it?


BUSH:

I think your premise, in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist _ that I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect.


QUESTION:

And ...


BUSH:

Hold on for a second, please. Excuse me. Excuse me.

No president wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true.

My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. When we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people.

Our foreign policy changed on that day. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life.

And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people, that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy, and that's why I went into Iraq.


QUESTION:

Iraq's interim prime minister said Sunday that violence is killing an average of 50 to 60 people a day and that if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Do you agree with Mr. Allawi that Iraq has fallen into civil war?


BUSH:

I do not. There are other voices coming out of Iraq, by the way, other than Mr. Allawi _ who I know, by the way; like; he's a good fellow.

President Talabani has spoken. General Casey the other day was quite eloquent on the subject. Zal Khalilzad, who I talk to quite frequently _ listen, we all recognize that there is a violence, that there's sectarian violence. But the way I look at the situation is that the Iraqis took a look and decided not to go to civil war.

They (the enemy) use violence as a tool to do that. You know, they're willing to kill innocent people.