At his last press conference as the top US military officer, Myers said extremists were using terrorism to try to break US will and drive American forces from Iraq.

"As a nation, our best weapons are patience and resolve or, in one word, our 'will'," he said. "We simply cannot afford to lose the will to finish the job at hand."

Myers, who steps down Friday as chairman, spoke following a weekend of anti-war protests in Washington and polls showing growing public disenchantment with a war that has claimed the lives of more than 1,900 US servicemembers.

"I think we will be victorious and we'll help with victory in Iraq, but Iraq's going to be perhaps a longer-term issue," he acknowledged.

"It's an insurgency that has to be dealt with probably over a longer period of time in which the political and economic instruments of power are going to play a major, major role," he said.

He warned against withdrawing US forces before the Iraqi government and security forces are capable of handling the insurgency.

If US forces were withdrawn prematurely and al-Qaeda dominated Iraq, he said, "then in my view we would have lost, and the next 9/11 would be right around the corner, absolutely."

A victory in Iraq "would be huge for al-Qaeda and their interests," he said. Al-Qaeda carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Calls for a withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq were prominent in the protests over the weekend, which police said drew more than 100,000 people.

Comparing the current war to the Vietnam War, Myers said "the stakes are much higher today."

"If we are not successful in the long war on terrorism, then our way of life is, indeed, at stake. I mean, it's just that simple," he said.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised Myers as a "wise and valued counselor."

"When the history of this time is written, an era of tragedy and turmoil and triumph, I believe it will be said of Dick Myers that he was one of the most consequential chairman of the joint chiefs in our history," Rumsfeld said.

"No chairman has been more deeply involved in more critical decisions involving our country and our security and certainly involving the men and women in uniform," he said.

Myers' four year tenure as President George W. Bush's top military adviser has spanned two wars -- in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and a bloody insurgency whose ferocity and tenacity took the US military by surprise.

He leaves a military that also is mired in controversy over abuses of prisoners and the indefinite detentions of hundreds of war-on-terror captives without Geneva Convention protections.

Meanwhile, three top leaders of al-Qaeda -- Osama bin Laden, his number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq -- have eluded capture.

But Myers said 600 al-Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed, all the September 11 plotters but bin Laden and Zawahiri have been "wrapped up," and the al-Qaeda leadership in Saudi Arabia has been "virtually wiped out."

"So I don't think they would take much heart out of the fact that there are three at the top that are still remaining," he said.

As chairman, Myers has been a key link between US civilian and military leaders.

How influential he has been or what might change with his departure remains unclear, however. As Rumsfeld's self-effacing sidekick at Pentagon news conferences, he has rarely hinted at disagreements with his boss.

Some critics have faulted him for not showing greater independence, but aides say his style has been to argue his differences in private.

He was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs when hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, killing more than 3,000 people.

Less than a month later, he was in the top slot as US-led forces retaliated, toppling Afghanistan's Taliban regime with a swift and innovative campaign that combined US air power with Afghan insurgents on the ground.

Within two years, US-led forces had invaded Iraq on what turned out to be unfounded suspicions it had weapons of mass destruction.

Myers will be replaced on October 1 as chairman by Marine General Peter Pace, currently the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

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