WASHINGTON — 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.
