Taking Stock of Iraq, Bush Strikes a Cautionary Tone

President Bush on Monday marked the approaching third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by offering a carefully constructed account of progress against the insurgency and sectarian violence, saying that U.S.-trained Iraqi forces were increasingly responsible for securing the nation.

But in remarks intended to shore up flagging support for the war, the president warned that despite those forces’ best efforts, mayhem would continue.

“I wish I could tell you that the violence is waning and that the road ahead will be smooth. It will not,” he said. “There will be more tough fighting and more days of struggle -- and we will see more images of chaos and carnage in the days and months to come.”

Monday’s address at George Washington University was the first of at least three speeches that Bush plans to give in the coming weeks to counter suggestions that Iraq is descending into civil war. Despite his continuing efforts to reverse waning popular support for his policies, opinion polls indicate that Americans have grown increasingly skeptical about the U.S. role.

Criticizing the president’s remarks as “another public relations campaign,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Monday that Bush should instead be making a greater effort to “help form the representative government in Iraq that is essential for defeating the insurgency and ending the sectarian violence.”

Speaking before an audience assembled by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative foreign policy group, Bush said that since the March 20, 2003, invasion, Iraqis had gone from “living under the boot of a brutal tyrant ... to elections for a fully constitutional government.”

He also said that Iraqi security forces took the lead in quelling unrest after the destruction last month of the Golden Mosque, a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra, and that a concerted Pentagon effort had begun to turn the tide in protecting American troops and Iraqi civilians against roadside bombs.

Immediately after the attack on the shrine, Bush said, Iraqi leaders put security units on alert, “canceling all leaves and heightening security around mosques and critical sites,” with Iraqi police units staffing checkpoints, protecting peaceful demonstrators and arresting those who were violent.

Citing one Iraqi deployment after the attack, Bush said a brigade was dispatched to a mosque occupied by armed militia members.

The government troops “were able to convince the Iraqi militia to leave peacefully,” because they “spoke their language and understood the culture,” Bush said.

Some analysts, however, have said that while a daytime curfew and the show of force by the United States and Iraqi units turned back would-be rioters before full-scale civil war broke out, the response only forced insurgents to go underground, where they initiated a new round of kidnappings and killings. In the last two days, more than 80 Iraqi civilians were killed and more than 300 wounded in sectarian violence.

The president said that Iraqi units, expanding their reach, hold primary responsibility for more than 30,000 square miles of the country, an increase, he said, of about 20,000 square miles since the start of the year. Iraq encompasses about 167,000 square miles.

And he set a goal of having Iraqis control more territory than coalition forces by the end of 2006 -- a rare example of specificity from a president who has avoided setting timetables for U.S. actions. “As Iraqis take over more territory,” he said, “this frees American and coalition forces to concentrate on training and on hunting down high-value targets like the terrorist [Abu Musab] Zarqawi and his associates.”

Bush said that U.S. battalions had formed partnerships with Iraqi national police battalions, and that the U.S. was working with Iraqi leaders “to find and remove any leaders in the national police who show evidence of loyalties to militia.”

He also cited gains in recruiting Sunni Muslims, a minority in Iraq where Shiite Muslims form the majority, to join the national police.

Bush called the attack on the shrine a “massive provocation” and “a clear attempt to ignite a civil war.” But, he said, “the Iraqi people made their choice. They looked into the abyss and did not like what they saw.”

The roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have been among the deadliest elements of the insurgents’ arsenal.

The “weapons of fear,” as Bush called them, are made of artillery shells, explosives and other munitions and can be detonated remotely.

Bush said that Iraqi insurgents began using them against U.S. troops after being defeated at Fallouja and Tal Afar, two insurgent strongholds.

In fact, improvised explosives have been the insurgents’ weapon of choice almost since the war began. Over the last year, insurgents have managed to build more powerful bombs that rip through the strongest armor on military vehicles.

Trumpeting the progress that the military is making against the devices, Bush said that nearly half of those found in Iraq were disabled before being detonated, and that the military had made strides in reducing the number of U.S. casualties each attack caused. At the same time, Pentagon statistics show the number of total improvised explosives attacks nearly doubled last year compared with 2004.

Partly as a result of complaints from commanders in the field, the Pentagon moved last year to expand the authority and scope of the task force dealing with the threat. Formerly commanded by a one-star general, the task force had been criticized for lacking enough influence to push other government agencies to commit personnel and resources to the effort.

The task force is now led by retired four-star Army Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, who could ultimately have up to 350 people under his control. The administration also nearly tripled the budget for combating improvised explosives, and is spending about $3.3 billion this year.

Times staff writer Mark Mazzetti contributed to this report