President Tries to Resolve Mixed Signals After Pentagon Remarks

ANNE E. KORNBLUT, The New York Times, Published: August 12, 2005

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 11 - Faced with mounting casualties and signs of diminished support for the war, President Bush said Thursday that while the United States was making progress in Iraq, it was too soon to say when the number of American troops could be scaled back.

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President Bush, flanked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, spoke to reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Speaking in unusually personal terms, forced on him in part by the defiant presence outside his ranch here of the mother of an American soldier killed last year in Baghdad, Mr. Bush said he had considered and rejected calls by some antiwar protesters for an immediate withdrawal.
He also signaled that, despite planning by senior Pentagon officials for a potential troop reduction as early as next spring, he was not certain Iraqis could handle their own security well enough for the United States to begin leaving anytime soon.
Mr. Bush dismissed such talk as "speculation based upon progress that some are seeing in Iraq as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to take the fight to the enemy."
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