President George W. Bush on whether keeping troops stationed in Iraq was the best option: “So we’re making good progress. We’ve reduced our troops from 160,000 more or less to 139,000. As you know, I announced to the country that we would step up our deployments — step up deployments and retain some troops for the elections. And then I said we’d get them out, and we’ve done that. In other words, the withdrawals that I said would happen, have happened… No, I appreciate that question. The person to ask that to, the person I ask that to, at least, is to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, my top military advisor. I say, do you feel that we’ve limited our capacity to deal with other problems because of our troop levels in Iraq? And the answer is, no, he doesn’t feel we’re limited. He feels like we’ve got plenty of capacity.”
– Transcript, “Press Conference of the President,” George W. Bush – White House Archives online, Accessed on 9/1/2016