Bush: U.S. Won't Pay Ransom for Hostages

President Bush said today that the United States will not pay ransom for American citizens reported kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents and repeated his belief that the war in Iraq will ultimately be won.

Bush made his comments just hours after the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera broadcast a video in which Iraqi militants claimed they had kidnapped a U.S. security consultant. A blond, Western-looking man sitting with his hands tied behind his back was also shown.

The authenticity of the video could not be immediately confirmed. The video contained images of a U.S. passport and identification card and the logo of the Islamic Army in Iraq.

"We, of course, don't pay ransom for any hostages," Bush said at the White House in a question-and-answer session following a meeting with the director-general of the World Health Organization, Lee Jong-Wook. "What we will do is use our intelligence-gathering to help locate them."

If true, the so-far unidentified man would become the second American taken hostage in Iraq in the past two weeks. A U.S. citizen was kidnapped Nov. 27 along with three other peace activists by a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness.

During the White House questioning, Bush also responded to a reporter's query about recent comments by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean that the United States will not be able to win the war in Iraq.

"I know we're going to win," Bush said. "And our troops need to hear not only are they supported but that we have got a strategy that will win."

"Oh, there's pessimists, you know, and politicians who try to score points," Bush said in an apparent reference to Dean. "But, no, our strategy is one that will lead us to victory."

In an interview Monday with WOAI-AM radio in San Antonio, Tex., Dean said, "The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong" and compared it to the U.S. efforts in Vietnam. He added that the United States needs "to be out of there and take the targets off our troops back."

Bush said the only thing the "enemy has got going for them is the capacity to take innocent life and to get on our TV screens with the devastation that they cause.

"These people cannot stand free societies, they have no regard for the human condition, they'll kill women and children at the drop of a hat; all aimed at frightening the American people and trying to get us to withdraw," Bush said. Bush repeated his oft-stated belief that withdrawing American forces from Iraq now would provide terrorists a safe haven from which to plot further terrorist attacks.

"The lessons of September the 11th are lessons this country will never forget," Bush said, referring to the 2001 terrorist attacks against New York and Washington. "And we've got to take each threat seriously, we've got to stay on the offense."

Meanwhile, Vice President Cheney said it would be "unwise in the extreme" to withdraw the 160,000 U.S. troops from Iraq now, saying it would increase the risk of terrorist attacks in the United States and around the world.

"On this both Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree: The only way the terrorists could win is if we lose our nerve and abandon our mission," Cheney said at the Fort Drum military base in northern New York. "To leave that country before the job is done would be to hand over Iraq to car-bombers and assassins."