Bush presses on progress made in Iraq

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- President Bush sought to counter rising criticism about Iraq by touting what he sees as postwar progress, but a fresh burst of violence there Thursday did not help his public-relations offensive.

Bush has complained in recent days that good news out of Iraq has not been getting through the "filter" of the news media. So in a speech to reservists and members of the National Guard in New Hampshire Thursday, he was ready to offer success stories.

Bush's pep talk to the weekend warriors was the beginning of a long day that also had him talking up the economy in the Northeast and then traveling to Kentucky to raise money for a Republican locked in a tight gubernatorial contest.

As of Wednesday, some 166,000 National Guard members and reservists were on active duty, mostly deployed to hot spots in the war on terror like Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush was saluting members of the New Hampshire Air National Guard, Army National Guard and reservists in Portsmouth, N.H. During the Vietnam era, Bush flew with the Texas Air National Guard.

The reluctance of U.S. allies to send more troops to Iraq has caused greater pressure on members of the National Guard and Reserve units. Pentagon officials say they may have to activate thousands more reservists in coming weeks to augment troops in Iraq.

Such call-ups uproot part-time servicemen and women from their families and civilian jobs, and some military analysts fear it could depress recruitment in the future.

"If I'm just brutish with regard to the treatment of our people, then we won't have any people," Lt. Gen. James Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, said in a recent Associated Press interview. "They'll tell us ... 'I'm out of here."'

In the face of growing doubts about postwar Iraq, Bush is leading a new effort to persuade the public that there are positive developments there.

In the speech to troops Thursday, he was to emphasize signs of progress in Iraq, what Bush calls "the central front in the war on terrorism," and what the events mean for "the safety and security of the American people," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.

He warmed up Wednesday night with a speech at a fund-raiser in Washington sponsored by the Republican National Convention.

Bush said that since the liberation of Iraq, investigators have found evidence of a clandestine network of biological laboratories, the advance design work on prohibited long-range missiles and an elaborate campaign to hide the illegal programs.

Hours before he spoke in New Hamsphire, a suicide driver roared through the gates of a police station in a Baghdad slum and detonated his car bomb in the courtyard, killing eight policemen and civilians and injuring dozens of people. The driver and a passenger also were killed.

Elsewhere in the capital, a Spanish military attache was shot to death after four men, one dressed as a Shiite Muslin cleric, knocked on his door, according to a Spanish diplomat in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In a separate address to the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Buchan said, Bush planned to stress progress on the economic front with a message to business leaders that the economy is moving in the right direction.

On the state-by-state map of the 2000 presidential election, New Hampshire was an island -- the only Northeastern state to vote for Bush. Bush is eager to keep it in his column. The trip is Bush's fourth to New Hampshire as president.

In a poll released Wednesday by the University of New Hampshire, Bush came out ahead in matchups against the top three Democratic candidates for the nation's first binding presidential primary next year, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and retired Gen. Wesley Clark.

Bush was raising money in Lexington, Ky., Thursday for Rep. Ernie Fletcher, who is tied in polls with Democrat Ben Chandler in the race for Kentucky's governor.

The president has collected more than $84 million for his unopposed primary campaign next year.

Bush sent his wife and vice president on the road to raise money for his re-election on Thursday.