THE TIMES: Mr President, last night you mentioned the link...

THE TIMES: Mr President, last night you mentioned the link between Iraq and 9/11, but thereÕs evidence of Iraq becoming a haven for jihadists, thereÕs been a CIA report which says that Iraq is in danger of Ñ are you at risk of creating kind of more of the problems that actually led directly to Ñ?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No. Quite the contrary. Where you win the war on terror is go to the battlefield and you take them off. And thatÕs what theyÕve done. TheyÕve said, ÔLook, letÕs go fight. This is the place.Õ And that was my point. My point is that there is an ideology of hatred, an ideology thatÕs got a vision of a world where the extremists dictate the lives, dictate to millions of Muslims. They do want to topple governments in the Middle East. They do want us to withdraw. TheyÕre interested in exporting violence. After all, look at what happened after September 11 (2001). One way for your readers to understand what their vision is is to think about what life was like under the Taleban in Afghanistan.

So we made a decision to protect ourselves and remove Saddam Hussein. The jihadists made a decision to come into Iraq to fight us. For a reason. They know that if weÕre successful in Iraq, like we were in Afghanistan, that itÕll be a serious blow to their ideology.

General (John) Abizaid (Commander of US forces in the Middle East) told me something very early in this campaign I thought was very interesting. Very capable man. HeÕs a Arab-American who I find to be a man of great depth and understanding.

"When we win in Afghanistan and Iraq, itÕs a beginning of the end." (Talking about the war on terror). "If we donÕt win here, itÕs the beginning of the beginning."

And thatÕs how I view it.