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Washington: Standing with Iraqis whose ink-stained fingers showed they voted, US President George W Bush said Iraq's election on Thursday was a big step to meeting US goals and he hoped it would send a message to Iran and Syria. Faced with wide US public disapproval of his Iraq strategy, Bush hailed the millions of Iraqis who voted for "defying the terrorists and refusing to be cowed into not voting". "There's a lot of joy as far as I'm concerned in seeing the Iraqi people accomplish this major milestone on the march to democracy," Bush said. He appeared in the Oval Office with five Iraqi Americans who voted at ballot places in the United States. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, too, expressed satisfaction with the voting in Iraq.
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