Bush says US victory in Iraq felt 'from Beirut to Tehran'

WACO, Texas -- The US military victory against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq gets the credit for ''inspiring democratic reformers from Beirut to Tehran," President Bush said yesterday.

''Today, women can vote in Afghanistan, Palestinians are breaking the old patterns of violence, and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are rising up to demand their sovereignty and democratic rights," Bush said in a weekly radio address that marked the two-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. ''These are landmark events in the history of freedom."

The president also saluted military personnel who died in Iraq, numbering more than 1,500 since the start of the war in March 2003, and the families who have endured long separations from loved ones.

''I know that nothing can end the pain of the families who have lost loved ones in this struggle, but they can know that their sacrifice has added to America's security and the freedom of the world," he said. ''Because of our actions, freedom is taking root in Iraq, and the American people are more secure."

In Iraq, meanwhile, violence continued.

Militants killed five police officers, one of them a police commissioner, as the insurgency pressed on with its tactic of targeting Iraqi security forces, Shi'ites, and Kurds, and focusing less on American troops.

Newly elected Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders marked the March 19, 2003, start of the war with a fresh promise to form a government by the end of the month, when the National Assembly convenes for only the second time, nearly two months after lawmakers were elected.

Gunmen killed Ahmed Ali Kadim, a Baghdad regional police commissioner, as he traveled to his office in the Doura neighborhood. In the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, attackers killed a policeman, then bombed his funeral procession, killing three other officers, including a cousin of Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader pegged to become Iraq's next president.

A suicide attacker trying to kill US troops in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, prematurely detonated his car bomb, killing only himself, according to Iraqi police and the US military.

Despite the continuing attacks, the top US general in Iraq, Army General George Casey, said recently that the level of violence against US troops had dropped significantly since the Jan. 30 election. That seemed to be the result of a tactical shift by the insurgency, made up mostly of Sunni Arabs dominant under Hussein.

The Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al Qaeda in Iraq group have said they hope the bombings, kidnappings, and beheadings will lead to a sectarian war.

Shi'ites make up about 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, while Sunni Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population. Kurds, who are Sunni but mostly secular, make up 15 to 20 percent.

The 275-member National Assembly, Iraq's first democratically elected legislature in recent memory, was first convened Wednesday.