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President Bush said Friday he is not ready to declare victory in Iraq or end the fighting even though Saddam Hussein is "no longer in power."

"I want to hear our commanders say we have achieved the clear objectives that we have set out. That's when we will say this is over," the president said.

He promised that every resource will be employed to rescue the seven Americans known to have been taken as prisoners of war in Iraq. "We pray that they are alive, because if they are, we'll find them," he said.

Bush spoke after private visits with about 75 wounded U.S. troops and their families in two Washington-area military hospitals a fraction of the 343 total wounded in action in Iraq so far. Along the way, Bush handed out 10 Purple Hearts, the military's honor for those wounded in combat, and watched as two Marines one from Mexico, the other from the Philippines were sworn in as U.S. citizens in an emotional ceremony.

Citizenship for one of them, Lance Cpl. O.J. Santa Maria, was expedited by an executive order Bush signed last year allowing a faster process for anyone taking part in military hostilities after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Suffering visibly from a shoulder wound received in Nasiriyah and hooked up to a blood transfusion, Santa Maria managed to stand over protests for the ceremony. Halfway through, he broke down sobbing from the pain and the occasion.

"We're proud to have you as an American," Bush told him, according to press secretary Ari Fleischer. "I'll never forget this moment."

Going room by room with wife Laura, Bush saw 33 others at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, some individually, some grouped together. Earlier, he visited about 40 soldiers being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in northwest Washington.

Suicide bombings, ambush attacks, land mines and a host of other battlefield traumas had left them bandaged, in wheelchairs or hooked up to blood transfusions, even one mostly unconscious.

But many were eager to return to the battlefield.

One soldier, badly injured by a rocket-propelled grenade, thanked Bush for "allowing us to do our jobs."

"Were you ready?" Bush asked.

"Hell, yes," replied the soldier, his name withheld like most of the others. "I'll do it again when I'm ready."

Another soldier arrived at Bethesda after being run over by a 70-ton tank. Medical personnel feared he had lost the use of his legs.

But after five days in intensive care, he was walking ward-to-ward urging his colleagues to get well and get back out there earning the nickname "Tank" and jokes about what condition the vehicle must be in after the encounter.

The president distributed his thanks and pride and not a few jokes in every room.

"The Marine Corps is awesome just ask the other side," he told a roomful of men, five in wheelchairs.

The president reflected on the progress in Iraq.

"We've had an historic week," he said."I don't think I'll ever forget, I'm sure a lot of other people will never forget the statue of Saddam Hussein falling in Baghdad and then seeing the jubilation on the faces of ordinary Iraqis as they realized that the grip of fear that had them by the throat had been released, the first signs of freedom."

Bush said he does know Saddam's fate, but "I do know he's no longer in power."

He stopped short, however, of declaring victory in Iraq and said he wouldn't do so until the commander of U.S.-led forces in the Persian Gulf, Gen. Tommy Franks, made the call. "The war will end when Tommy Franks says we have achieved our objectives," Bush said.

White House officials said there is no guarantee that Bush will ever formally declare the war over, and he certainly won't do so any time soon, in part because a premature declaration would open him to criticism if more casualties follow.

Instead, Bush could bask in a series of victories the first meeting of potential leaders of a new Iraq, expected to be held in the next 10 days; free flow of humanitarian goods; the formation of an interim authority to govern Iraq; the election of a new government without a formal declaration of the war's end, aides said.

photo credit and caption:

President Bush delivers remarks with first lady Laura Bush at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Friday, April 11, 2003 in Washington. Bush spoke with reporters at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, a suburb of Washington, after a bedside visit with troops he had sent to war and who had been wounded or injured. Earlier, Bush paid a similar visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in northwest Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

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