President Urges Americans to Unite in Prayer : Morale: Bush refers to the ‘triumph of the moral order.’ He invokes an Abraham Lincoln.

WASHINGTON —  President Bush said Saturday that the United States is waging war in the Middle East against “evil that threatens world peace,” and he urged Americans to “unite together in prayer” today.

In a brief radio speech broadcast Saturday, the President said the presence of half a million U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf bears witness “to the fact that the triumph of the moral order is the vision that compels us.”

The President has declared today a National Day of Prayer. He is spending the weekend at Camp David, Md., and the White House said he would mark the day of prayer by attending church services with his wife, Barbara, at a private chapel on the Camp David grounds this morning.

In his radio address, recorded before the weekend, Bush recalled a statement made by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War: “I’ve been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go.”

“At this moment,” Bush said, “America, the finest, most loving nation on Earth, is at war: at war against the oldest enemy of the human spirit--evil that threatens world peace.”

While not mentioning Iraq or its president, Saddam Hussein, in his radio text, the President in recent weeks has taken more and more to equating Hussein with evil.

On Friday, in a speech to the families of soldiers in Saudi Arabia, he referred to the release of at least 11 million barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf and talked about the “endless appetite for evil that would lead a man to make war on the world’s environment.”

“In this moment of crisis, may Americans of every creed turn to our greatest power and unite together in prayer,” Bush said.

“Let us pray for the safety of the troops--these men and women who have put their lives and dreams on hold because they understand the threat our world faces,” the President said. “Let us pray for those who make the supreme sacrifice,” for the prisoners of war, for the families of the troops and “for the innocents caught up in this war.”