Overthrowing Saddam Hussein was "the right decision", US PresidentGeorge W Bush said in a speech to mark the fifth anniversary of theinvasion of Iraq.He said the world was a safer place because the US had acted. Mr Bush spoke as anti-war protests were held in several US cities amid mounting opposition to the war and its costs. Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama said the decisionto invade was made on ideological grounds, instead of "reason andfacts".In his speech, Mr Bush dismissed what he called "exaggerated estimates" of the war's price tag. "The costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq," he said.
New alliesHe said recent troop reinforcements had brought about "a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror". Mr Bush argued that fighting Islamic militants in Iraq helped to prevent attacks on targets in the US. "The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets ofBaghdad want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities,"he said.
"Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home." He also made the case that by working with Sunni Arabs from so-calledAwakening Councils to defeat al-Qaeda, the US was successfully drivinga wedge between militants and the Arab mainstream. "In Iraq," he said, "we are witnessing the first large-scale Arabuprising against Osama Bin Laden. And the significance of thisdevelopment cannot be overstated." He made no reference to the fruitless search for weapons of massdestruction in Iraq - a major justification for launching the war.
Cost controversyAs the president spoke, 32 people were arrested protesting in front of the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington.
 |  Protesters against the Iraq war demonstrating in Washington DC give their views   In pictures |
The protesters were trying to draw attention to taxpayers' money funding the war. "We wanted to put our bodies between the money and what that money goesto fund - the war, the occupation, the bombs," said Frida Berrigan fromthe War Resisters League. Anti-war protests have also been planned for other American citiesincluding New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Estimates of what the war has cost vary considerably. The non-partisanCongressional Budget Office estimates $600bn (£300bn) has been spent onthe war so far, including this year's appropriations. Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calculates that the warwill cost $3 trillion (£1.5 trillion) once health care for veterans andfuture economic losses are considered.
Campaign issueOn the presidential election campaign trail, Democratic Partyfront-runner Barack Obama criticised the Bush administration's motivesfor launching the war. "There was a president for whom ideology over-rode pragmatism and therewere too many politicians in Washington who spent too little timereading the intelligence reports and too much time reading publicopinion," he said in a speech in North Carolina.
 Senator Obama voted against the invasion in 2002 |
Both he and his rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, have pledged to end the war. On a campaign stop in Detroit, Michigan, Mrs Clinton repeated herpromise to start withdrawing US troops from Iraq within 60 days ofbeing elected president, saying it was time for Iraqis to takeresponsibility for their future."We have given them the precious gift of freedom and it is upto them to decide whether or not they will use it. We cannot win theircivil war. There is no military solution."Only the expected Republican Party nominee, John McCain, has continued to support the Bush administration policy in Iraq. Meanwhile in Iraq, a female suicide bomber killed six people ata bus station in Balad Ruz in Diyala province, according to Iraqipolice. And near the northern city of Kirkuk, US troops shot dead three Iraqipolicemen by mistake, an incident officials described as "a tragicaccident, which was sincerely regretted"
Bush welcomed co-operation with Sunni Arabs 
President Bush