Bush Sees Iraq Progress From Troop Buildup

FORT JACKSON, S.C., Nov. Two — President Shrub offered an cheerful appraisal on Friday of advancement in , saying that while corruptness remained a job and unemployment was high, the economic system was growing, force was down and, "slowly but surely, the people of Republic Of Iraq are reclaiming a normal society." Range of War

Speaking to 1,300 alumni of the Army's basic preparation encampment here, Mr. Shrub gave his first advancement study on Republic Of Iraq since September, when he announced that his troop buildup would come up to an end by adjacent spring, with decreases beginning at the end of this year.

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

To do his lawsuit that the scheme is working, Mr. Shrub ticked off a litany of statistics. Since the buildup was completed in June, he said, the figure of onslaughts each hebdomad involving I.E.D.'s, or improvised explosive devices, had dropped by half. The figure of American armed forces deaths, he said, had fallen to its last degree in 19 months.

With Karbala State moving to Iraki control this week, Mr. Shrub said Iraqis were now responsible for security in 8 of Iraq's 18 provinces.

"The Iraqis are becoming more than capable, and our military commanding officer states me that these additions are making possible what I name 'return on success,'" Mr. Shrub said. "That agency we're slowly bringing some of our military personnel place — and now we're doing it from a place of strength."

Mr. Shrub typically happens friendly audiences at military bases, and Friday was no exception; the alumni and their relations and friends applauded wildly as he arrived on the grassy parade field here, and they interrupted his comments respective modern times with ft stomping and cheers.

The address came as Mr. Shrub was pressing the Democratic-controlled Congress to O.K. an exigency disbursement measure for the warfares in Republic Of Iraq and Afghanistan. Argument on the disbursement measure may not take topographic point until early adjacent year, but some are already predicting that the Democrats may do another effort to coerce Mr. Shrub to switch scheme in Iraq, in order to convey the military personnel place more quickly than he had planned.

In a statement responding to Mr. Bush's speech, the Senate Democratic leader, of Nevada, accused the president of "overstating the security situation" in Iraq.

"While the lessening in U.S. and Iraki civilian deceases is welcome news, force stays high in Iraq," Mr. Thomas Reid said. "Our primary end — political rapprochement — is still out of reach, and Iraki security military units have got not met the duties the president himself laid out for them when he proclaimed his escalation scheme in January."

When Mr. Shrub first announced the troop buildup in January, he said it was intended to give the authorities of Prime Curate "breathing space" to construct a cohesive cardinal authorities that could bridge over the sectarian divisions that were ripping Republic Of Iraq apart. Mr. Shrub conceded Friday that "reconciliation at the national degree hasn't been what we hoped it'd been by now," and said he had "made my letdowns clear to the Iraki leadership."

But he argued, as he have in the past, that rapprochement was taking topographic point at the local level, and that Shi'Ite and Sunnite leadership were beginning to collaborate with one another to struggle against , a homegrown extremist grouping that American intelligence federal agencies state is foreign-led.

Mr. Shrub also took the unusual measure of offering a body-count figure, saying that together with Iraki forces, American military personnel had killed or captured an norm of more than than 1,500 "enemy fighters" per calendar month since January.

On the economical front, the president argued that Iraki society was beginning to go back to normal.

"We're seeing improvements in of import economical indicators," he said. "Inflation have been cut in half. Electricity production in September reached its peak degrees since the warfare began — and higher than it was under ."