"We can't be defeated militarily”

Fox News had an exclusive interview with President Bush today.

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Wednesday that not everything in Iraq went the way pre-war planners prepared, but that's no surprise since assumptions always change once the ground war begins.

In a wide-ranging interview with FOX News' Brit Hume, Bush said that military planners prepared to help prevent starvation among Iraqis and mass movements of people, but those consequences of war did not occur. He added that historians will look back and debate whether it was a good idea or not to disband Saddam Hussein's army when coalition forces moved into the country.

You can find it here. Click on the video tab to watch the interview and the President's speech on the Iraqi elections.

. . . Bush said he made the right decision to go into Iraq and topple the former Iraqi dictator.

"I said it today and I said it at the last speech I gave ... I made the right decision. Knowing what I know today, I would have still made that decision," Bush said.

The president spoke with FOX News' Hume on the eve of the Iraqi election for a 275-member Parliament, the first election of its kind since before Saddam and his allies grabbed power through a Ba'ath Party coup in 1968.

The president said that even as tactics have changed over time, "strategy has been the same. Remove Saddam Hussein, remove the threat and establish a democracy."

Bush said that as long as he is president, the United States will not lose its nerve and desert the Iraqis before it's the right time for U.S. forces to leave.

"We can't be defeated militarily ... The enemy has got the capacity to and the wherewithal to kill innocent people and those pictures get on our TV screens. And Americans say, 'We'll we're not making any progress. We can't get there. Let's get the boys out before we complete the mission.' It's not what will happen so long as I'm the president. But that's what worries me the most, that we forget the stakes of the War on Terror and that we lose our nerve," Bush said.

I agree and I am glad the President is out there saying these things.