President Barack Obama says his central responsibility as president is to restore the nation's fragile economy and to help put the millions of people who lost jobs back to work.

Obama is devoting part of his prime-time speech on Iraq to the economy. In excerpts released by the White House, the president says restoring the economy is, in his words, "our most urgent task."

Obama says that includes strengthening education and job training, jump-starting industries that create jobs, ending dependence on foreign oil, unleashing innovation and nurturing ideas from entrepreneurs.

Obama calls the task difficult but necessary.