President Bush Visits Iraq

President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq today. He made a great speech to the troops serving there. You can read the text of the speech on The White House website.

Here are a few excerpts from the President Bush's speech in Baghdad:

"I understand long deployments are tough -- they're tough on you and they're tough on your families. And so the first thing I want to tell you is the American people are incredibly grateful for what you do, and I bring their greetings and their thanks for the sacrifices you and your family make. "

"These are historic times. The mission that you're accomplishing here in Iraq will go down in the history books as an incredibly important moment in the history of freedom and peace; an incredibly important moment of doing our duty to secure our homeland."

"You know, right after September the 11th I knew that some would forget the dangers we face. Some would hope that the world would be what it's not -- a peaceful place in which people wouldn't want to do harm to those of us who love freedom. I vowed that day, after September the 11th, to do everything I could to protect the American people. And I was able to make that claim because I knew there were people such as yourself who were willing to be on the front line in the war on terror."

"I told you earlier we were laying the foundation of peace for generations to come, and we are, because we go with confidence knowing that liberty is the desire of every soul. When Iraq succeeds, reformers and people who desire to live in a free society will see such a hopeful example, and they'll begin to demand the same rights and the same conditions and the same hopeful society."

"And that's why I tell you what you're doing is historic in nature. People will look back at this period and wonder whether or not America was true to its beginnings; whether we strongly believed in the universality of freedom and whether we were willing to act on it. Certainly we acted in our own self-interest right after September the 11th; and now we act not only in our own self-interests, but in the interests of men, women and children in the broader Middle East, no matter what their religion, no matter where they were born, no matter how they speak."

"This is a moment -- this is a time where the world can turn one way or the other, where the world can be a better place or a more dangerous place. And the United States of America and citizens such as yourself are dedicated to making sure that the world we leave behind is a better place for all."