During his final press conference of the year, President Bush backed further away from his statement last month that the United States was "absolutely winning" the war in Iraq.
In an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday, Bush for the first time changed course to admit that the war was not being won by the United States, but wouldn't go so far as to say that it was being lost.
"We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush told The Washington Post.
When presented with his October 24th statement ("Absolutely, we're winning"), Bush said "that was an indication of my belief we're going to win."
During today's press conference, Bush was again asked to explain why he seemingly backtracked from his earlier assessments of the situation in Iraq.
The president said his earlier comments were based more on his "belief."
"I believe that we're going to win, I believe that," Bush said. "My comments yesterday reflected the fact that we're not succeeding nearly as fast as I had wanted."
Right at the start of his oval office interview yesterday, Bush told the Post that he planned to increase the size of our "stressed" armed forces.
"Listen, a couple of things before we get going," Bush said. "Obviously, I've been thinking about -- and talking to a lot of people about -- the way forward in Iraq and the way forward in this ideological struggle. I want to share one thought I had with you, and I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops, the Army, the Marines. And I talked about this to [Defense] Secretary [Robert M.] Gates, and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea. I want to give him a little time to get his feet on the ground. And so I'll be addressing this after consultations with him. I just want to share that with you before we get going."
This point was further emphasized in today's White House appearance, where the President acknowledged "2006 was a difficult year for our troops and the Iraqi people."
During his final press conference of the year, President Bush backed further away from his statement last month that the United States was "absolutely winning" the war in Iraq.