Bush Takes Questions

President Bush briefly emerged from his protective bubble yesterday, took a few thorny questions from an unscreened audience and a network anchor, and was more forthcoming than he has been in months. Plus, there's more to come: Two more network interviews this week.

Could this be the sign of a new White House openness? Stay tuned.

Tough Ones From the Audience

Bryan Bender writes in the Boston Globe: "Speaking in the run-up to Iraqi elections, President Bush departed from the largely scripted public events he's used to justify the Iraq war and unexpectedly fielded some tough questions from his audience yesterday, defending his administration's use of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to justify toppling Saddam Hussein and estimating that 30,000 Iraqis have died since the 2003 invasion.

"After his talk to the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia, in which he likened Iraq's political struggles with the setbacks of the early days of American independence, Bush opened the floor to questions -- and found himself facing some skeptics."

Here's the transcript of Bush's speech. As I first reported in my December 6 column , Bush's advance team conspicuously refused to allow questions when he spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations last week.

Press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that Bush decided to take questions only hours before the Philadelphia speech began.

The first one made headlines around the world:

"Q Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

"THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post: "The first person he called on was Didi Goldmark, 63, a former libel lawyer from New Hope, Pa., who asked him how many Iraqis have died in the war. Unlike aides who have been asked that question, Bush gave a direct answer. . . .

"The estimate marked the first time Bush has personally provided an assessment of the Iraqi death toll, a highly sensitive subject that his administration largely avoids discussing at any level, much less from the presidential lectern. Although the Pentagon keeps careful track of Americans killed in Iraq -- now exceeding 2,100 troops -- military officers have said they do not count Iraqi dead. . . .

"Bush moved on to the next question without identifying how he arrived at the figure or how many were killed by U.S. forces and not Iraqi insurgents and foreign militants. Aides later said it was not a government estimate but a reflection of figures in news media reports. Still, Bush offered it without qualification, in effect accepting it as a reasonable approximation. . . .