US: President Bush has said he believes he made the right decision to invade Iraq and thinks voters will not deny him a second White House term, even if they disagree with the war.
With the number of US casualties expected to reach 1,000 well before the election, Mr Bush told USA Today: "The president has to make hard decisions. My job is to confront problems, not pass them on and the American people have seen me make the hardest of decisions. That's just going to have to be a part of their decision-making process."
Separately, he told the New York Times that he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" after US troops went to Iraq. Public opinion initially favoured Mr Bush's decision to go to war but, after months of casualties and chaos, the public is now evenly divided on the subject.
Mr Bush said also he stood by his Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, despite two reports this week criticising the Pentagon over the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail.
In the USA Today interview, Mr Bush was also asked why he was staying in politics.
"There's a lot of my friends who come and bass-fish with me. They don't say it out loud, I know they're thinking it: why?"
"And the answer is because the stakes are high. Because there is more work to be done to make the world a freer and more peaceful place.
"It is essential that America leads in the 21st century in order to defeat the ideologues who use terror as a weapon, in order to secure the homeland, but also in order to spread liberty."