Bush Sees Iraq Progress From Troop Buildup

FORT JACKSON, S.C., Nov. 2 — President Bush offered an upbeat assessment on Friday of progress in Iraq, saying that while corruption remained a problem and unemployment was high, the economy was growing, violence was down and, slowly but surely, the people of Iraq are reclaiming a normal society.

Speaking to 1,300 graduates of the Armys basic training camp here, Mr. Bush gave his first progress report on Iraq since September, when he announced that his troop buildup would come to an end by next spring, with reductions beginning at the end of this year.

In the September speech, the president called the new strategy return on success, a phrase he reiterated in his remarks here on Friday.

To make his case that the strategy is working, Mr. Bush ticked off a litany of statistics. Since the buildup was completed in June, he said, the number of attacks each week involving I.E.D.s, or improvised explosive devices, had dropped by half. The number of American military deaths, he said, had fallen to its lowest level in 19 months.

With Karbala Province moving to Iraqi control this week, Mr. Bush said Iraqis were now responsible for security in 8 of Iraqs 18 provinces.

The Iraqis are becoming more capable, and our military commander tells me that these gains are making possible what I call return on success, Mr. Bush said. That means were slowly bringing some of our troops home — and now were doing it from a position of strength.

Mr. Bush typically finds friendly audiences at military bases, and Friday was no exception; the graduates and their relatives and friends applauded wildly as he arrived on the grassy parade field here, and they interrupted his remarks several times with foot stomping and cheers.

The speech came as Mr. Bush was pressing the Democratic-controlled Congress to approve an emergency spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Debate on the spending bill may not take place until early next year, but some are already predicting that the Democrats may make another attempt to force Mr. Bush to shift strategy in Iraq, in order to bring the troops home more quickly than he had planned.

In a statement responding to Mr. Bushs speech, the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, accused the president of overstating the security situation in Iraq.

While the decrease in U.S. and Iraqi civilian deaths is welcome news, violence remains high in Iraq, Mr. Reid said. Our primary goal — political reconciliation — is still out of reach, and Iraqi security forces have not met the responsibilities the president himself laid out for them when he announced his escalation strategy in January.

When Mr. Bush first announced the troop buildup in January, he said it was intended to give the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki breathing space to build a cohesive central government that could bridge the sectarian divisions that were ripping Iraq apart. Mr. Bush conceded Friday that reconciliation at the national level hasnt been what we hoped itd been by now, and said he had made my disappointments clear to the Iraqi leadership.

But he argued, as he has in the past, that reconciliation was taking place at the local level, and that Shiite and Sunni leaders were beginning to cooperate with one another to fight against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led.

Mr. Bush also took the unusual step of offering a body-count figure, saying that together with Iraqi forces, American troops had killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 enemy fighters per month since January.

On the economic front, the president argued that Iraqi society was beginning to return to normal.

Were seeing improvements in important economic indicators, he said. Inflation has been cut in half. Electricity production in September reached its highest levels since the war began — and higher than it was under Saddam Hussein.

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