Bush Rhetoric Grows but Aides Are Cautious : Policy: A ‘peaceful Thanksgiving’ is forecast despite remarks that cause some in Administration to cringe.

President Bush, on a campaign trip in Texas, again stepped up his rhetoric against Iraq on Monday, warning that any acceptance of uncontrolled aggression “could be world war tomorrow.”

Bush Administration officials hastened to assure reporters that Bush’s remark was an unguarded comment, not a signal of any intention to launch a war.

The country will see “a peaceful Thanksgiving” unless Iraq itself launches an attack, a senior Pentagon official said, denying widely circulated rumors about plans to begin a U.S. offensive sometime this month.

Nonetheless, Bush’s remark underlined an increasing problem for the Administration: After exercising tight control over his comments during the early phase of the anti-Iraq campaign, Bush’s rhetorical enthusiasm over the last week has been in full swing, causing anxious cringing on the part of Administration planners.

Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, for example, Bush carefully compared Iraq’s aggression with the German aggression against Poland that launched World War II. But he stopped short of a personal comparison of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler.

That caution went out the window last month, when Bush not only compared Hussein to Hitler but also threatened Nuremberg-style war crimes trials.

Then, last week, Bush went further, briefly maintaining that the Iraqi leader is worse than Hitler because the Germans never held U.S. citizens as “human shields” at military sites.

“Got to get his rhetoric under control,” one official said after hearing of Monday’s comment.

The rhetoric, in fact, conflicts with Administration plans for the next several weeks--plans that officials say are centered around slowly continuing to build up forces in the Persian Gulf. The buildup, they add, is likely to include sending combat reserve units into active duty for the first time since the Vietnam War.

The call-up would address political problems with key members of Congress, who are demanding that the combat reservists be sent as a demonstration of resolve and to fulfill a promise to the reserve troops themselves.

The call-up also would help solve the Army’s desire to augment the more than 210,000 GIs now in Saudi Arabia and to provide replacements when a rotation policy is begun early next year, officials said.

About 34,000 reservists have already been activated for the conflict, but all have been noncombat specialists such as transport pilots, cargo handlers, cooks, electricians and medical personnel.

Military leaders have objected to calling up combat units, believing that they would take too long to transport, train and integrate with the active-duty units already in Saudi Arabia. That exclusion has caused howls of protests from lawmakers, who appropriated billions of dollars to equip and train the reserves and National Guard troops.

In addition, many reservists themselves have bitterly complained of being treated as second-class citizens by their active-duty counterparts.

The units most likely to be called first are two “round-out brigades” attached to the 1st Cavalry and 24th Infantry Divisions, the 155th Armored Brigade from the Mississippi National Guard and the 48th Infantry Brigade from the Georgia National Guard.

Also this month, the Administration is looking forward to a scheduled international inspection of Iraqi nuclear facilities. The inspection could help answer mounting questions about Saddam Hussein’s progress toward developing an atomic bomb.

Earlier this fall, Iraqi officials hinted at an international meeting that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency might be barred from examining nuclear energy facilities in the country.

But U.S. officials now say they expect the Iraqis to drop that idea, which would have immediately heightened Persian Gulf tensions. “We’ve seen no signs that they will refuse” to allow the inspectors into Iraq, one Administration official said. “There are so many people itching to pull the trigger,” the official added, “they would not want to give anyone an excuse.”

The main target of the IAEA inspection would be two small stockpiles of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, one from France, the other from the Soviet Union. Both were sold to Iraq as fuel for nuclear reactors years ago.

The French stockpile, slightly more than 12 kilograms, or about 26 1/2 pounds, has been enriched to a very high level, more than 90% fissionable U-235. The Soviet stockpile is smaller and less enriched. But the two together could provide enough uranium to build one crude bomb, according to non-government experts on nuclear weapons.

Government analysts agree that Iraq has been trying for years to develop the capacity to build a bomb, but they disagree about how much longer it will take. A key question is Iraq’s ability to enrich its own uranium, rather than rely on the small amounts of enriched uranium it can obtain.

Some analysts believe Iraq may have as many as two dozen gas centrifuges, the key devices needed to complete the enrichment. But “it takes about 1,000 centrifuges operating for one year to produce enough stuff for one bomb,” noted Leonard S. Spector of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington.

Most experts agree that Hussein is still several years away from having nuclear capacity.

Staff writer James Gerstenzang in Texas contributed to this story.