Despite escalating violence and the vast clamor of critics in the United States and abroad, Iraq has not fallen into a state of civil war, U.S. President George W. Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. The president acknowledged a bloody campaign of sectarian violence and the difficult and dangerous work of trying to end it. Our commanders and diplomats on the ground believe that Iraq has not descended into a civil war, Bush said. They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country. The president s appraisal differed sharply from the latest Pentagon assessment of the war in Iraq, released Friday, which described spreading sectarian violence and increasingly complex security problems. The report said death squads increasingly targeting mainly Iraqi civilians to heighten the risk of civil war. Bush s address repeating nearly word-for-word the message of a speech earlier this week in Salt Lake City: The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq, so America will not leave until victory is achieved. The path to victory will be uphill and uneven, and it will require more patience and sacrifice from our nation, he said.
