WASHINGTON, June 29: In an attempt to link the war in Iraq to the attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001, President George Bush has told Americans they have to win in Iraq or face fighting terrorists at home.

On the first anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq, he used his nationally televised address on Tuesday, delivered at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, to bolster flagging public support for the war in Iraq.

During his speech, he referred to the events of Sept. 11 six times. “The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11… if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like (insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like (Osama) bin Laden.

“For the sake of our nation’s security, this will not happen on my watch,” he said.

Mr Bush said Iraq was now the centre of the war on terrorism. “The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. This war reached our shores on September 11, 2001.”

The speech marked a change of emphasis for Mr Bush, who has spoken of the benefits of spreading democracy across the Middle East. He also avoided calling the combatants insurgents, instead referring to them as terrorists.

Their aim, he said, was “to remake the Middle East in their grim image of tyranny and oppression, by toppling governments, by driving us out of the region and exporting terror”.

“There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.”

Mr Bush also pledged that American troops would stay in Iraq until their job was done.

Critics of the US war in Iraq, however, condemned Mr Bush for attempting to link the insurgency there with the Sept. 11. Leaders of the opposition Democratic Party accused the president of reviving a questionable link between Iraq and 9/11.

“I think the American people are a lot smarter than that,” Delaware Senator Joseph Biden said. “They’ve figured this out.”

And in Britain, Lynne Jones, a lawmaker in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ruling Labour Party, said any attempt to suggest that Iraq was a response to the Sept. 11 attacks was ‘absolute nonsense’. “There is absolutely no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda,” she said.

“What they have ensured, in invading Iraq, is they have actually promoted Al Qaeda’s involvement in other countries, including Iraq.”

British MP George Galloway, who was expelled from Labour Party over his criticism of the war, said: “The truth is, as everyone can see, that Zarqawi and the other extremist formations that have sprouted in Iraq are the result of the invasion, not the reason for it.

“The swamp of hatred against the West has been vastly deepened by the actions of those two world leaders, Bush and Blair.”

Australian opposition politicians said the speech reinforced fears that the conflict would drag on indefinitely. “Iraq has been a conflict without timelines, without an exit strategy and indeed without a mission statement from day one,” Labour Party spokesman Tom Cameron said.

“Australia needs to refocus on the region and the war on terror instead of getting bogged down in the bloody quagmire of Iraq’s insurgency.”

Mr Bush also rejected calls that the United States should send more troops to help put down the insurgency. “Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight,” he said.