As US forces escalated its bombings on Baghdad, US President George W. Bush held a war cabinet meeting at Camp David, a presidential retreat in Maryland, on Saturday to review the developments of war in Iraq.
The meeting, lasted for 90 minutes, was attended by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA director George Tenet, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers and other top administration and military officials, the Associated Press reported.
Bush is spending his first weekend at Camp David since the war began Wednesday night.
In his regular weekly radio address, Bush reminded American people Saturday that the war on Iraq "could be longer and more difficult than some have predicted," an apparent attempt to lower the expectation of the American people that the war could be over quickly.
"A campaign on harsh terrain in a vast country could be longer and more difficult than some have predicted," Bush said, adding that US forces "face enemies who have no regard for the conventions of war or rules of morality."
Meanwhile, demonstrators continued to take to the streets in US cities such as Washington, New York and Chicago on Saturday, voicing their opposition to US war against Iraq.
(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2003)
