NEW LONDON - US President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Iraq's leaders to show their people and a war-weary US public that they are "taking action" to defuse tensions fueling deadly chaos there.
And the embattled president, touting newly declassified information, sought to cast the unpopular conflict as a fight between US forces and Al-Qaeda terrorists looking to use that country as a base for attacks on US shores.
"Victory in Iraq is important for Osama bin Laden. And victory in Iraq is vital for the United States," he said at the graduation ceremony of the US Coast Guard Academy here, referring to the network's fugitive mastermind.
Bush, facing pressure from the US public and lawmakers to set benchmarks for political progress in Iraq on the way to calling troops home, pushed the fragile Baghdad government to step up efforts at national reconciliation.
"The Iraqi government has a lot of work to do," he said. "The Iraqi people must see that their government is taking action to bring their country together and give all Iraqis a stake in a peaceful future."
Bush cited the need to pass legislation on sharing oil revenues; preparing provincial elections; reviewing Iraq's constitution; and crafting reforms to allow low-level members of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath party to hold jobs.
At the White House, officials awaited emergency war funding legislation after Bush's Democratic foes abandoned efforts to tie the money to plans for troop withdrawals he had vowed to veto.
At least one Democratic presidential hopeful, former senator John Edwards, blasted the decision as "another blank check" for Bush and called for defeating the legislation. "It is time for this war to end," he said.
Under pressure despite what looked like a legislative victory, Bush focused his speech on newly declassfied information -- previously the subject of news reports -- to bolster his argument that a hasty US withdrawal from Iraq would give Al-Qaeda a useful base.
The US president cited intelligence reports that bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 devastation in the United States, had worked in 2005 to create an Iraq launching pad for follow-up strikes.
Bush cited US intelligence that bin Laden told Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to plan terror strikes outside Iraq and on "number one priority" the United States. Zarqawi later died in a US attack June 7, 2006.
Zarqawi welcomed the move and said he already had "some good proposals," leading bin Laden to tell his one of his lieutenants, Hamza Rabia, to send Zarqawi a briefing on Al-Qaeda's global operations, said Bush.
At that time, a top Al-Qaeda member, Abu Faraj al-Libi, also suggested to bin Laden that he send Rabia to Iraq help Zarqawi plan external operations.
Rabia was killed in Pakistan in December 2005. Libi was captured in May 2005 and is being held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"Many critics compare the battle in Iraq to the situation we faced in Vietnam. There are many differences between the two conflicts, but one stands out above all: The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does," said Bush.
He spoke as the Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman denied reports of a new Iraq strategy but said "at the end of the day there will be an assessment that comes up through the chain of command with respect to Iraq, and makes some recommendations. Then there will be some decisions with respect to that."
In the US Congress, Democrats late Tuesday relented on their crusade to insert troop withdrawal timelines into a new Iraq war funding bill, as they work to replace a 124 billion dollar version vetoed by Bush this month.
The House of Representatives was expected to vote on one amendment funding the troops, and a second packed with extra domestic spending on Thursday, before sending the package to the Senate for a vote by the end of this week.
Anti-war Democrats are now targeting several big defense funding bills due to come up in Congress in the next few months, and say September is now the "moment of truth" for the war with a report on the surge strategy expected by General David Petraeus.
Even some top Republicans have warned that strategic changes may be needed by September, absent clear signs of success.

05/23/2007 17:42 GMT