President George W. Bush, warning the US must stay the course in Iraq despite rising casualties, said today that some of the guerrillas that US forces are facing there are fighting to establish a Taliban-like government in Iraq.
In a Veterans Day speech at the Heritage Foundation, Mr Bush said Saddam Hussein loyalists and "foreign jihadists" are working together to launch attacks against Americans and Iraqis in a 200-square-mile area he called the "Baathist triangle" and including Saddam's home region.
"Foreign jihadists have arrived across Iraq's borders in small groups with a goal of installing a Taliban-like regime," Mr Bush said, referring to the Islamic hardliners in Afghanistan who harbored Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network before they were thrown from power by US forces after the September 11th2001, attacks.
He said Saddam loyalists and the jihadists "may have different long-term goals, but they share a near-term strategy: To terrorize Iraqis and to intimidate America and our allies."
Critics say the US war has attracted Islamic militants to Iraq to attack US forces despite their hostility to Saddam's former secular regime. They say this has essentially madeBush's oft-spoken claim that Iraq was a part of the war on terrorism a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mr Bush said the work in Iraq and Afghanistan was not easy, but that it was essential not to fail. "The failure of democracy in those two countries would convince terrorists that America backs down under attack, and more attacks on America would surely follow," he said.