May 1, 2004 - 5:30 AM

Bush acknowledges "tough times" in Iraq

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush says a year after his triumphant "mission accomplished" speech on the Iraq war
that there have been "tough times" but progress is being made.

At the end of the bloodiest month of fighting since the war began, with 134 Americans dead, Bush made no apologies for declaring "major
combat operations" over on May 1, 2003, when he donned a flight suit and landed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.

Bush's visit to the Lincoln was a flag-waving spectacle that was supposed to celebrate the end of major fighting in Iraq and signal a turn in
U.S. policy toward forming a democratic government for grateful Iraqis.

Instead, a guerrilla insurgency has grown in intensity. U.S. forces are being shot at both by Saddam Hussein's Sunni Muslims and some in
the Shi'ite majority who were happy to see Saddam gone. About 730 U.S. troops have now died in Iraq since the war began.

U.S. policymakers who felt American forces would be treated as liberators are now chagrined to see Iraqis regard them as occupiers and to
witness sliding support for the war at home.

Bush spent Friday evening having dinner at the home of a main architect of the Iraq war, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we had accomplished a
mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein," Bush told a Rose Garden news conference with visiting Canadian Prime Minister Paul
Martin.

He said "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq" and that "a friend of terror has been removed and now
sits in a jail."

"TOUGH TIMES"

However, no weapons of mass destruction, the main reason Bush cited for the war, have been found.

"We've had some tough times," Bush said. "And we've had some tough fighting because there are people who hate the idea of a free Iraq.
They're trying to stop progress, because they understand what freedom means to their terrorist ambitions."

A poll by The New York Times and CBS News reported this week that American support for the war in Iraq had eroded substantially in
recent weeks and Americans were increasingly critical of the way Bush was handling the conflict.

Only 47 percent of respondents questioned in April said the United States had done the right thing by going to war against Iraq, down from
58 percent a month earlier and 63 percent in December.

As a result Iraq is increasingly a campaign issue for Bush, who faces an election challenge from Democrat John Kerry in November.

Kerry on Friday urged Bush to "put pride aside" and bring the international community together to help with stabilisation and reconstruction
in Iraq.

The Democratic National Committee issued a "mission not accomplished" statement that said "there is still no exit strategy or any idea how
long we will have troops in Iraq."

"One year ago, the president declared 'mission accomplished' when the mission was nowhere near accomplished," said California Rep.
Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democratic minority in the House of Representatives.

"The Bush administration did not know what it was getting into in Iraq, and one year later, it is clear that it has no realistic plan to truly
accomplish the mission," she said.

Bush insisted that "we're making progress" in Iraq and said U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was developing a plan for a caretaker government
to take over from the U.S.-led coalition on June 30, when Washington is determined to hand over sovereignty.