GRAND ISLAND, Neb. – President Bush celebrated Saddam Hussein’s death sentence as a victory for “Iraq’s young democracy” and U.S. security, highlighting Sunday’s verdict in the last hours of an election campaign in which Republicans are suffering from public discontent with the Iraq war.
Bush painted Hussein’s conviction and sentence as vindication of the sacrifices made by American soldiers in Iraq. More than 2,800 members of the U.S. military have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
“They’ve sacrificed for the security of the United States,” said the president, who spoke to reporters in Texas before flying to campaign appearances on behalf of Republicans in Nebraska and Kansas. “Without their courage and skill, today’s verdict would not have happened.”
With the verdict a chance to recall Hussein’s December 2003 capture by U.S. troops in a hole in the ground – still one of the high points of the war for Bush – he repeated these points later during campaign visits to two of America’s reddest states.
“My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision, and the world is better off for it,” he said to raucous applause.
Democrats, hoping for large gains that could put them in control of the House and possibly the Senate, moved quickly to both applaud the sentence and repeat their campaign-trail argument that Bush’s leadership on Iraq has been a failure.
“The scope of that failure is not lessened by the results of Saddam’s trial,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., poised to become House speaker if Democrats wrest the majority from the GOP.
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