Bush Says U.S. Won’t Waver in Iraq Mission

BAGHDAD -- As attacks on U.S. soldiers continued Tuesday, President Bush for the first time sought to soothe an anxious public about the rising violence in Iraq.

Six U.S. soldiers were wounded in two ambushes on the streets of Baghdad, and an explosion inside a mosque compound in Fallouja killed 10 Iraqis, including the popular imam. In a sign of frustration with the occupation, Iraqis immediately blamed the explosion on the U.S. military, which dismissed the charge.

Two months ago, Bush declared the principal fighting that unseated President Saddam Hussein to be over. Since then, the violence against U.S. troops and Iraqis helping them has escalated.

Other administration officials have downplayed the attacks and have said that the U.S. commitment to rebuilding Iraq would not waver. On Tuesday, Bush used a White House reenlistment ceremony to personally make the same points to a public that is concerned, according to national polls.

Bush blamed the steady stream of attacks against U.S. troops in recent weeks on “scattered groups of terrorists, extremists and Saddam loyalists” and insisted that his “war on terror” was making steady progress.

“These groups believe they have found an opportunity to harm America, to shake our resolve in the war on terror, and to cause us to leave Iraq before freedom is fully established,” Bush said. “They are wrong, and they will not succeed.”

Administration officials described as exaggerated reports that Iraqis are increasingly angry at the U.S. presence. L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said more and more Iraqis are rallying to help American investigators track down loyalists.

“None of this is surprising or unexpected,” he said of the recent spate of attacks against occupying forces.

However, at the scene of one Baghdad attack, anti-American sentiment was running high.

A Humvee, reduced to a blackened, smoldering, twisted heap, sat in the middle of the street, ringed by U.S. soldiers, rifles at the ready. They nervously held back a crowd of curious people, gathered to look -- and many to gloat -- at the attack that injured three Americans.

No one was reported killed, but onlookers reveled in the rumors anyway. Two dead, proclaimed one man confidently. No, it was four, another said.

It was the 10th attack on U.S. forces resulting in casualties since Saturday.

Casualties also increased among Iraqis on Tuesday.

In Fallouja, a city west of Baghdad that has been swept up in anti-American resentment since troops arrived in April, a U.S. military spokesman denied that Americans had anything to do with the explosion at the mosque. He speculated that militants may have stored weapons there, or were in the process of assembling bombs at the site, possibly for use against the U.S. forces.

The Americans were blamed for the deaths, nonetheless, and the victims were celebrated as martyrs at their burial. Many residents embraced as fact a fast-spreading rumor that a U.S. warplane had bombed the mosque.

“How could the Americans attack a house of God?” asked Mustafa Mardan, a 44-year-old cement worker who was helping clear the rubble at the site. “This can only make things worse between the Iraqis and the Americans. There will never be peace.”

In another incident, the chief of Hussein’s tribe was gunned down by unknown assailants in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the regional governor said Tuesday. The shooting Sunday of Abdullah Mahmoud Khattab could have been part of a personal vendetta.

He also may have been shot by Hussein loyalists angry that Khattab had disavowed the ousted leader shortly after the arrival of U.S. troops, according to unnamed residents cited by Associated Press.

Ambushes and other guerrilla-style attacks have killed 31 U.S. and British troops and wounded nearly 200 since May 1. Despite those signs of hostility, Bremer said that all was going according to plan.

“We are on target, and we are continuing our strategy,” he said at a news conference inside Baghdad’s Assembly Hall, formerly used by Hussein’s parliament.

Two U.S. national surveys released Tuesday indicate that people are worried about how the U.S. effort is going in Iraq and that there are doubts about the administration’s rationale for the war.

Both a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll and a survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that a majority of Americans now believe U.S. efforts in Iraq are not going well; 53% felt that way in the University of Maryland study and 56% in the Gallup Poll.

The University of Maryland poll also found that a majority of Americans believe the Bush administration was misleading about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in an effort to make a case for war. Fifty-two percent said the government “stretched the truth,” 10% said it presented evidence it knew was false, and only 32% believed the government was fully truthful.

All the same, public support for remaining in Iraq remains high, the polls found. Eighty percent of those polled in the University of Maryland survey agreed that the U.S. has “the responsibility to remain in Iraq as long as necessary,” and in the Gallup Poll, three-quarters said the American toll in Iraq since the war is about what should be expected given the inherent danger of the mission.

The president’s remarks suggested that administration officials are concerned that military morale and public support may soon be in jeopardy if the current level of violence continues.

“At present, 230,000 Americans are serving inside or near Iraq. Our whole nation, especially their families, recognizes that our people in uniform face continuing danger,” the president said. “We appreciate their service under difficult circumstances, and their willingness to fight for American security and Iraqi freedom.”

Those difficulties are emphasized by increasing security around the protected zone in which most of the U.S. civil administration operates.

Fresh rows of concertina wire and labyrinths of earth-filled barricades designed to deter suicide truck bombers surround the building.

At the site of the attack on the Humvee near the city’s Mustansiriya University, onlookers voiced support for the attack that destroyed the U.S. military vehicle and ignited a civilian truck that happened to be passing.

Witnesses said that a red Toyota had signaled that it wanted to make a U-turn and then passed slowly in front of the Humvee.

Suddenly there was an explosion and the car sped away. Witnesses said they did not know if it had fired a rocket-propelled grenade or detonated some other kind of device.

Ayad Khalaf Mohammed, 25 and unemployed, said he saw two U.S. soldiers with their clothes afire. Their comrades took them away, he said.

“We hate the American soldiers because they never offer us anything,” said Mohammed Ubeid, 34, a now unemployed former worker for the Transportation Ministry, who gave what has become the common litany of complaints: no electricity, no salaries, tainted water with not enough pressure to fill the taps, and rude treatment at checkpoints.

The Americans “have depleted the country,” he said. “They have to leave immediately.”

The attack followed another ambush Tuesday morning along the Abu Ghraib highway on the western outskirts of Baghdad that injured three other Americans.

Mohammed Radwan Hayani, a ceramics trader who lives about 100 yards from the scene, said he heard an explosion about 7 a.m., when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a passing American convoy.

“This is an invaded country,” Hayani said. “Do you expect that Iraqis will welcome them? Today when this happened, there were a lot of people happy and they were saying things like, ‘Look at those dirty dogs.’ ”

Bremer, in his news conference, grew testy at a reporter’s suggestion that many Iraqis were unhappy with the U.S. presence.

“I’ve traveled around this country a lot and spent four days on the road this week, and I didn’t meet any of those people you’re talking about,” he said. When the reporter, of National Public Radio, insisted that he was not alone in hearing such opinions, Bremer answered: “Good -- maybe you can do my job better than I can.”

In Fallouja, many residents of the working-class Al Askari neighborhood appeared convinced that the United States deliberately targeted their mosque. Word of the blast circulated rapidly from teahouses to shops to homes, and the scenes of devastation were played over and over on Arabic-language television.

Mourners leaving midday prayers at the mosque hoisted simple wooden coffins containing five of the victims and marched a mile and a half to the cemetery for burial.

“This is a war between crusaders and Muslims!” shouted one irate marcher as the noisy procession passed by, amid dozens of Kalashnikov rounds fired in outrage by young men.

The U.S. Army, which has a significant presence in Fallouja, was nowhere in sight -- clearly a decision not to aggravate an already combustible scenario.

Neighborhood residents told reporters that shortly before the blast, a U.S. warplane was seen and heard flying over the neighborhood. Some said the plane had been there for a short time; others said it had circled for several hours.

Despite the blast and several more recent attacks, Col. Joseph DiSalvo, the U.S. military commander in Fallouja, pointed to an improving rapport between the military and restive residents.

“The relationship between coalition forces and the citizens within Fallouja improves every day,” he said. “We’re seeing more security and stability. Yes, there are instances of rogue activities, which we are working hard to eliminate.”

Daniszewski reported from Baghdad, McDonnell from Fallouja and Reynolds from Washington. Times staff writer Ronald Brownstein in Washington contributed to this report.