UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- President Bush told the United Nations Tuesday that although he expected increasing attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, they would not affect U.S. resolve.
"We can expect terrorist attacks to escalate as Afghanistan and Iraq approach national elections. The work ahead is demanding. But these difficulties will not shake our conviction that the future of Afghanistan and Iraq is a future of liberty," Bush told the U.N. General Assembly.
"The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat, it is to prevail."
Bush was speaking two years after he went to the United Nations with his arguments for a war in Iraq, and more than a year after what he termed the finish of major combat operations. Facing a presidential election in exactly six weeks, Democrats have hammered Bush for continued and escalating violence in Iraq.
The president told the United Nations, however, that those attacks would not affect the U.S. determination to see both countries become democracies.
"We will stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes of freedom and security are fulfilled," he said.
