‘Bring Them On,’ Bush Says of Iraqi Resisters

As two more U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and three more were wounded, President Bush vowed Wednesday to forge a military structure that will crush threats to American troops there.

But with the president mulling whether to send U.S. peacekeepers to Liberia, Pentagon officials said there were no plans to add to the 150,000 U.S. troops now deployed in Iraq.

In a potentially disturbing new development, U.S. investigators in Iraq concluded Wednesday that a bomb-making class at a mosque near Fallouja on Monday had apparently caused the explosion that killed 10 Iraqis and prompted calls by townspeople for an anti-American jihad. If confirmed, the incident could be evidence of a link between guerrillas conducting the wave of anti-American violence and the larger Sunni Muslim community.

Fallouja, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, has been a center of anti-American sentiment since the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq this spring. But the coalition has never suggested that the troubles were due to organized resistance by Sunni religious leaders.

In an appearance in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, Bush was asked about efforts to persuade other nations, including France and Germany, to send troops to bolster the U.S.-British occupation forces in Iraq. The U.S. has 230,000 troops stationed in Iraq and the surrounding theater, while Britain has about 12,000. Washington has approached about 70 capitals seeking help, but so far only 24 have agreed to send troops, notably Poland, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Italy, according to an Associated Press tally.

Bush said that he welcomes help from other nations, but that “we’ve got plenty tough force there right now to make sure the situation is secure.”

“We’ll put together a force structure who meets the threats on the ground,” Bush said, adding, “Anybody who wants to harm American troops will be found and brought to justice.”

Some Iraqi resistance fighters may think that “conditions are such that they can attack us,” and believe that casualties may persuade the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq prematurely, Bush said. “My answer is, bring them on.”

Bush’s comments drew quick fire from two Democratic presidential hopefuls.

“Enough of the phony, macho rhetoric,” said Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who has opposed the Iraq war, called Bush’s statement “incredibly reckless rhetoric.”

Since Bush declared the end of major combat May 1, 32 U.S. and British soldiers have been killed in a variety of attacks. A U.S. soldier died Wednesday of injuries from an attack a day earlier. In addition, a U.S. Marine was killed and three Americans and an Iraqi were injured Wednesday during mine-clearing operations in Karbala.

The escalating attacks on coalition forces in recent days have prompted questions about whether the U.S. has enough troops in Iraq to deal with the resistance, and whether the Pentagon will be able to proceed with its plan to rotate some weary soldiers out as international forces begin to arrive in September.

The Pentagon denied a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Iraqi administrator L. Paul Bremer III had requested more troops to provide security for reconstruction efforts.

“No such request was made for additional military forces,” a senior defense official said. But the official said Bremer will continue to add civilians to his reconstruction team.

The official said the president’s remarks on creating a force structure to handle the attacks did not imply that the U.S. is preparing to deploy additional troops to Iraq. “We’re not going to pull out forces that are needed if the international forces are not there yet,” the official said. “But there was no intention to imply that we’re going to put in more forces than are there now.”

He added: “Commander after commander has said the force level is about right.... If things change, those force levels could go up or they could go down.”

Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, incoming head of the U.S. Central Command, is conducting a review of how many and what kind of forces are needed to enforce peace in Iraq, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said this week that he expects a report this month.

However, one former military official said that if Abizaid or his colleagues conclude they do need more forces in Iraq, they will be reluctant to say so publicly.

“Clearly, they do not want to be savaged in public for Shinseki having been right,” the former officer said. He was referring to former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki advocating a larger invasion force and telling Congress that several hundred thousand U.S. ground troops would be needed in Iraq -- an observation that earned Shinseki a public rebuke from Rumsfeld.

Richard K. Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, said more U.S. soldiers are needed, at least temporarily.

“There are all sorts of places where we have no presence, or we have two or three troops there who get ambushed or kidnapped because they are just spread too thin,” Betts said. “Shinseki was right.”

Others said what the U.S. needs to secure Iraq is not so much ordinary Army troops, who are ill-suited for peacekeeping duty, but civilians trained to deal with security issues. Bremer is probably seeking the very civilian intelligence officers and Arab linguists who are also most in demand back in Washington, said retired Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, who commanded U.S. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The occupation forces should also have the same type of special civilian units that were used for peacekeeping in Kosovo and Bosnia, more civilian police advisors to rebuild the shattered law enforcement system, and more counterintelligence officials to infiltrate the resistance, he said.

“What’s not well understood is that the intelligence burden in peacemaking is much tougher than in wartime,” said Meigs, who is now at Texas A&M; University’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service in College Station.

In wartime, the military can depend on satellites and aerial surveillance to detect enemy movements, he said. But more human intelligence is needed now, Meigs said, because sensors cannot spot Al Qaeda terrorists or Baathist saboteurs traveling in pickup trucks.

If necessary, the Pentagon could increase troop levels for a short time, but could not sustain them, Meigs said. More than 60% of the Army’s 33 fighting brigades are already deployed in Iraq and the surrounding area, as well as Afghanistan, Bosnia and South Korea. “At some point, you can’t have half the Army in harm’s way all the time,” Meigs said.

U.S. military sweeps in central Iraq against those thought to be sponsoring the attacks continued for a fourth day Wednesday. The Army’s 4th Infantry Division ran five more raids, arresting three people and uncovering numerous small arms and grenades, the military said. Among the more than 80 people detained in the last four days were 20 wanted men, including leaders of the Fedayeen Saddam militia, an intelligence officer and several former Baathist officials, the U.S. military said.

Officials did not say what led them to conclude that there was a bomb-making class in the mosque compound in Fallouja. The blast occurred next to the mosque in a three-room cinderblock structure where the prayer leader, Imam Laith Khalil Dahham, lived along with an assistant. The explosion destroyed their rooms and smashed a hole in the wall of the mosque.

At the time of the explosion, residents said, a number of men were studying with the imam, described as a Koranic scholar in his mid-20s. Students would go to the mosque regularly Monday and Thursday evenings, residents said, while others came to study or read because the mosque was a quiet place with regular power from a generator.

“The imam ... never said anything about the Americans or about politics,” said Mohammed Ali, a mosque volunteer.

Residents of Fallouja blamed the explosion on the Americans. Many said a U.S. warplane had bombed the mosque. U.S. officials said there were no American planes flying in the vicinity of the mosque Monday, and U.S. investigators at the scene disputed the airplane theory, saying it was clear from the blast pattern that the explosion originated inside the compound.

The results of the investigation are unlikely to have much effect on public opinion in Fallouja, where word of the blast circulated rapidly and the scenes of devastation continue to be played on Arabic-language TV.

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Efron reported from Washington and McDermott from Baghdad. Times staff writers John Daniszewski in Baghdad, Patrick J. McDonnell in Fallouja and Esther Schrader in Washington contributed to this report.