President Bush Visits Arkansas

President Bush made his first-ever visit today to southern Arkansas` oil, timber and manufacturing hub at El Dorado and predicted the nation would see an abundance of jobs in the near future. The president reminded his audience of about 800 at the South Arkansas Community College that it would be critical, though, for workers to get the job training they need to take advantage of the job opportunities. In Arkansas alone, he said, computer- and math-related jobs will grow by 60 percent by the year 2010. The president`s short visit to Arkansas wasn`t officially billed as a campaign stop, but he spent much of his time defending his tax-relief measures, saying they made the recession the "shallowest ever." He also defended his policies on Iraq. Bush said everyone, including his administration, Congress and the United Nations, looked at the same intelligence reports after the nine-eleven terrorist attacks and came to the same conclusions. His decision to invade Iraq came down to whether to trust Saddam Hussein or to defend the country.