WASHINGTON - Despite growing anxiety about the war in Iraq, President Bush refused to set a timetable Friday for bringing home U.S. troops and declared, "I'm not giving up on the mission. We're doing the right thing."
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, with Bush at a White House news conference, expressed gratitude for the heavy U.S. sacrifice in Iraq - the deaths of at least 1,730 members of the military.
"You have given us something more than money," said al-Jaafari, who visited wounded U.S. troops Thursday night at a military hospital. "You have given us a lot of your sons, your children, that were killed beside our own children in Iraq ... This is more precious than any other kind of support we receive."
Taking questions Friday at the National Press Club, al-Jaafari dismissed any suggestion that the American people's growing impatience with casualties might curtail U.S. support and weaken Iraq's transition to a democratic government.
"Our strength really comes from the will of our people and our determination," he said in Arabic.
He also dismissed any suggestion Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition were confronted by a resistance movement. He said resistors normally fight on behalf of the people in a country. "But what we are seeing are random acts of violence against the Iraqi people," al-Jaafari said.
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