Bush to address nation tonight

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Bush will work to defuse two issues in his prime-time news conference Tuesday -- rising casualties in Iraq and his response in 2001 to a terrorism warning the White House had in hand before the Sept. 11 attacks.\nBoth issues are critical to Bush's re-election strategy, which is focused on the president's record on national security.\nBush plans to open the news conference -- the 12th of his presidency, but only his third televised in prime evening viewing hours -- with a statement on Iraq, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said Monday. He said the president will be prepared to address questions about a memo, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," Bush received Aug. 6, 2001.\n"After a tough week, there are important questions that are on the minds of the American people," Bartlett said.\nWith the Sept. 11 commission hearings and the recent battles in Iraq being broadcast into American homes, this is a good time for Bush to defend his policies, said Stephen Hess, a political analyst at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution. "This is an administration that gets in trouble because it doesn't speak up in a timely way and defend itself," Hess said. The news conference is "really quite necessary," he said.\nMonday at his Texas ranch, Bush deflected questions about the pre-Sept. 11 warning, telling reporters if the FBI had known about an imminent terrorist attack against America, the agency would have told him.\nStill, he added now might be the right time to "revamp and reform our intelligence services."\nTo questions about whether the security situation in Iraq was untenable, Bush replied, "The situation in Iraq has improved."\nThe president's upbeat assessment was based on a fragile cease-fire in Fallujah, Iraq. The predominantly Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad, Iraq, has been the site of fighting between insurgents and American troops after a mob mutilated the bodies of American security contractors killed in a March 30 ambush.\nU.S. troops have killed about 700 insurgents across Iraq since the beginning of the month. About 70 coalition troops -- almost all Americans -- have died in clashes.\n"A civil society, a peaceful society can't grow with people who are willing to kill in order to stop progress," Bush said. "And our job is to provide security for the Iraqi people so that a transition can take place."\nKarlyn Bowman, who does research on public opinion and politics at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., said Bush knows there is widespread anxiety throughout the United States about the instability in Iraq.\n"He has to convey being in charge and having a clear plan of what's ahead," Bowman said. "And I'm sure he will express compassion for the families" of those killed in the fighting.\n"I think on 9-11, the president has to reiterate that they would have done much more if they would have had specific information," she said, adding most Americans were not anxiously awaiting the release of the Aug. 6, 2001 memo, part of the president's daily brief. "I'm still not sure the public is in the mood to point the finger"