For Immediate Release
October 5, 2004

Global Message

From remarks by NSA Rice on ABC's "This Week," 10/3/04

What will win the war in Iraq is to support the Iraqis as they take on responsibility for their own future, and they are doing that. The international community is increasingly giving them that support.

NATO is putting a leadership training academy in Iraq, Tokyo is going to have a donors' conference to hold people accountable for what they have pledged to the Iraqis, the G-8 is giving its support to the Iraqis, and 30 countries are on the ground working with the United States, putting their people in harm's way.

Iraq is not a diversion but, in fact, a central front on the war on terrorism.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists are fighting so desperately in Iraq because they know that when there is a free and secure and democratizing Iraq in the center of the Middle East that the terrorists' ideology of hatred is going to be defeated.

It is not enough to deal with Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden, even though we are doing that. You have to change the circumstances that produced Al Qaida, and that is what a free Iraq will do.

Iraq's elections in January are going to be enormously important to the country's future.

President Bush laid out a five-point plan back in the spring, starting with the transfer of sovereignty -- which was accomplished two days ahead of time -- and is moving toward the creation of better Iraqi security forces.