"Five years into this battle, there's an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it. The answers are clear to me," Bush said at the Pentagon.

"Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight America can and must win," he maintained, referring to the late Iraqi dictator.

As he spoke scores of protestors gathered just a few blocks away in Washington calling for an end to the war in which nearly 4,000 US soldiers have died along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

Bush launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" at 21:30 pm on March 19, 2003 in the United States, when it was already 5:30 am in Baghdad on March 20, with a bombing blitz dubbed "shock and awe" by the American military.

Five years on, Iraqis and US forces still face daily attacks from insurgent gangs and Islamist militants, and the fighting between armed factions from both sides of Iraq's Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide rages on.

"The men and women who crossed into Iraq five years ago removed a tyrant, liberated a country, and rescued millions from unspeakable horrors," Bush said.

And he signalled there would be no swift end to his policy of keeping troops in Iraq for the time being, with about 158,000 US forces fighting a bloody insurgency in what has become America's second longest war after Vietnam.

"We have learned through hard experience what happens when we pull our forces back too fast. The terrorists and extremists step in," the president warned.

"They fill vacuums, establish safe havens, and use them to spread chaos and carnage," he said.

The US commander-in-chief now leaves office in January, bequeathing to his successor an intractable military and political stalemate.

By the most conservative tally, the war in Iraq has already cost the United States more than 400 billion dollars and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has argued the total bill could surpass three trillion dollars.

In his speech, Bush acknowledged the war has "come at a high cost in lives and treasure."

"There's still hard work to be done in Iraq. The gains we've made are fragile and reversible, but on this anniversary, the American people should know that since the surge began, the level of violence is significantly down, civilian deaths are down, sectarian killings are down," Bush said.

And he vowed, "the battle in Iraq will end in victory."

Vice President Dick Cheney marked the anniversary with a two-day surprise visit to Iraq this week, during which he repeatedly denounced calls from the White House's Democratic critics to draw down US forces.

In an interview Wednesday, Cheney, one of the key architects of the war, said US strategy in Iraq must not be "blown off course."

Queried on ABC television about polls showing that about two-thirds of Americans believe that the war was not worth fighting, Cheney's first response was "So?"

Asked whether he cared what the US public thought, Cheney replied: "No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."

The war has been one of the top issues on the campaign trail as Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fight to be the party's nominee in the November elections to stand against Republican John McCain.

Five years on the war remains deeply unpopular here, even though many Americans are increasingly more preoccupied with the state of the nation's ailing economy than the conflict.

Both Obama and Clinton have pledged to end the war, against McCain's steadfast support of the Bush administration. And Bush's popularity ratings have sunk to record lows.

Anti-war rallies were planned in Washington, New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco on Wednesday.

In the US capital, some 33 people were arrested in front of entrances to the Internal Revenue Service, organizers and media reported, as demonstrators sought to focus attention on taxpayers' money that bankrolls the war.

"This war needs to end and it needs to end now," Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, told AFP. "I think people are looking for new ways to express their opposition."

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