US News
Rice confident of US success in Iraq
By DPA
Aug 30, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The US public remains concerned about the country's role in Iraq, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a veterans' group Tuesday that the United States must stay the course in Iraq and will ultimately succeed.

'If we quit before the job is done, the cost of failure will be severe,' Rice said in her address to the American Legion national convention in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Rice said she knows Americans are concerned about the future of US involvement in Iraq.

'I see it in the challenged eyes of Americans across this country,' she said.

But as the United States approaches the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Rice said that the country is making progress in what the administration calls a war on terrorism. Those attacks were inspired by an 'oppressive ideology' that must be defeated, Rice said.

Rice compared the fight against terrorism to the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. In the late 1940s, no one could have predicted the end of the Cold War, but if the United States remains as committed to its goals of in the Middle East as it did to the downfall of the Soviet Union, the United States can once again prevail, she said.