While the president did not specifically address when some of the 130,000 U.S. troops might pull out, he was resolute in adhering to his plan of listening to military officials on the ground before deciding on any timetable.

"The message to the enemy is: Don't count on us leaving before we succeed," Bush told reporters in Washington after his surprise trip to Baghdad.

He had high praise after his first meeting with newly installed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, saying: "I saw first-hand the strength of his character and his deep determination to succeed."

Any uncertainty he may have had over the political will of al-Maliki and his cabinet to follow through on the reconstruction plan was eliminated, Bush said.

The president also applauded the tightening of security that began on Wednesday to quell any increase in insurgency action, with coalition troops focusing on central Baghdad before fanning out. He was briefed by the military on raids on insurgents and the air strike last week that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq.

Bush said the fact that Iraqi officials didn't know of his arrival until the last minute shouldn't be viewed in any kind of negative light, but, rather, was a necessary security precaution.

The Pew, which is widely respected and has been running since 2001, polled 17,000 people in 15 countries between March and May. In a press release, it says: "Despite growing concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the US presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a danger to world peace."

Only in the US and Germany is Iran seen as presenting a greater danger than the US in Iraq. Public opinion in 12 of the other countries - Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, India and China - cite the US presence in Iraq as being the greater danger. Opinion in Japan was evenly divided.

Throughout the period the poll was conducted the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, intensified by hardline comments from its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was repeatedly in the news. Iraq, too, has been almost daily in the news, with the formation of a new Iraqi government being accompanied by fears of a civil war.

As well as Iraq and Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also high on the list of issues that present a danger to world peace. Public opinion in about a third of the countries polled put it at the top of their list of threats.

The poll confirms the extent to which the well of international goodwill towards the US in the aftermath of 9/11 is being drained. Favourable opinions of the US have fallen in most of the countries.

One of the sharpest declines in support for the US has been in Spain. Only 23% of the Spaniards polled expressed positive views of the US, down from 41% last year. Even though Madrid suffered a large death toll from an al-Qaida attack two years ago, only about one in four supports the "war on terrorism".

Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56%, down from 71%); Russia (43%, from 52%); and Indonesia (30%, from 38%). In Turkey only 12% said they held a favourable opinion, compared with 23% last year.

In the UK, the US's closest ally in Iraq and the second biggest contributor of troops, 60% said the Iraq war had made the world more dangerous. Only 30% said it had made the world safer.

Forty-one per cent of British people said the US presence in Iraq represented a great danger to world peace, with 34% citing Iran as a big threat.

By contrast, concern about Iran has almost doubled in the US over the past two years, according to the poll. Almost half of Americans, 46%, view Mr Ahmadinejad's government as "a great danger" to stability in the Middle East and world peace, up from 26% in 2003. The growing concern in the US is shared in Germany, where 51% of those polled see Iran as a great danger to world peace compared with just 18% three years ago.

Public opinion is overwhelming opposed to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

While the public in most Muslim countries have a high regard for Iran, little confidence was expressed in Mr Ahmadinejad. About two-thirds in Egypt and Jordan said they had little confidence he would "do the right thing" in world affairs.

Full Survey

CAIR said the four-minute video, called "hadji girl," purports to be a "marine in Iraq singing a song about hadji." (A "Hajji" is a person who has made the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, but the term has often been used as a pejorative by U.S. troops in Iraq.) The song, posted online in March, tells of a U.S. Marine's encounter with an Iraqi woman. It has been viewed by almost 50,000 people.

The song's lyrics include: "I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me. As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally ... I blew those little f**kers to eternity ... They should have known they were f**king with the Marines." Members of the audience, not shown in the video, laughed and cheered wildly for these lyrics.

SEE: HADJI GIRL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTh9ZYS6Flc

Comments apparently posted by other military personnel express approval for the song's contents. One comment states: "This makes me happy to be a Marine. But look out! Here comes the rest of the country to call us evil!" Other comments criticize the video as racist.

"Given the recent allegations that U.S. Marines massacred Iraqi civilians in Haditha and other areas, we need to determine if this video is what it purports to be," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. "The inappropriate actions of a few individuals should not be allowed to tarnish the reputation of all American military personnel."

Awad called on Pentagon officials and members of Congress to investigate the video and all other allegations of such conduct in Iraq.

CAIR, America's largest Muslim civil liberties group, has 32 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

NOTE: CAIR offers an e-mail list designed to be a window to the American Muslim community. Subscribers to the list receive news releases and other materials dealing with American Muslim positions on issues of importance to our society. To subscribe to ISLAM-INFONET, go to: http://cair.biglist.com/islam-infonet/

CONTACT: CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-488-8787 or 202-744-7726, E-Mail: ihooper@cair-net.org

Ramadi is just another dot on the map; another set of mud-buildings in a vast ocean of oil; another convenient testing-ground for the War Department's next generation of high-tech weaponry. To hell with the people; their lives mean nothing.

The strategy for Ramadi is the same as everywhere else; "search and destroy"; identify all areas of resistance and crush them with an iron fist. We don't do diplomacy, we don't do negotiations, we don't do "body counts".

No one defies the new boss.

Ramadi is a teeming city of 400,000 people. Now it is under siege by Rumsfeld's legions. The water lines have been blown up, medical supplies have been blocked, electricity has been cut off, and tens of thousands of people are fleeing into the countryside without shelter or food.

This is what is taking place in Ramadi right now. It's not a video game; its real, and its being executed by the United States under the cover of "liberation" or some other such nonsense.

According to Times correspondent Megan Stack:

"The image pieced together from interviews with tribal leaders and fleeing families in recent weeks is one of a desperate population of 400,000 people trapped in the crossfire between insurgents and U.S. forces...U.S. and Iraqi forces had cordoned off the city...Air-strikes on several residential areas picked up, and troops took to the streets with loudspeakers to warn civilians of a fierce impending attack."

"Air strikes on residential areas"?

Not our areas, their areas. Areas where "hajis" and rag-heads live. Ramadi is just another "terrorist sanctuary" to be "democratized" with laser-guided weapons and firebombs. Who cares that thousands of lives will be lost in another barbarous assault on a civilian population? Who cares that property and infrastructure will be reduced to rubble?

The "free press" will paper it over. They always do.

1500 fresh troops have been deployed to Ramadi for the offensive. Residents are afraid of a Falluja-style battle where vast swathes of the city will be left in ruins and thousands of people killed or injured.

The city has been cut off from all sides and American patrols have announced on loudspeakers that civilians should evacuate immediately. Independent journalists are reporting that "fierce fighting" has already broken out between occupation forces and resistance fighters. Air strikes and helicopter raids have intensified. American soldiers are forcing their way into homes in residential areas and snipers have taken positions on the city's roof tops.

On Saturday, June 10, accounts from inside the city confirmed that:

"A full-scale American attack on Ramadi has commenced and fierce fighting is taking place in most of the districts...American fighter planes are now taking part in the offensive."

Silence from the American media. Silence from the congress. Silence from the United Nations.

Another colossal war crime is taking shape and the world averts its eyes once again.

Thousands of the city's residents have refused to leave because they either have no money, no means of transportation, or no place to go. They'll probably be caught in the crossfire just as others were in Falluja.

It's a good day for Rumsfeld; another chance to spread misery across the pock-marked landscape; another opportunity to experiment with the Pentagon's latest lethal gadgetry, another occasion to reduce a major Iraqi city to Dresden-type wreckage.

He is completely free to work his magic. No one will notice anyway.

Luis Posada Carriles, currently under arrest in the US charged with illegal entry into that country, was the first to report to Colonel Steele about the downing of a DC-3 aircraft in Nicaragua and the arrest of Eugene Hassenfus, the incident that led to the Iran-Contras scandal.

In a letter addressed to the US State Department, Kucinich notes that Colonel Steele, a current advisor to the US ambassador in Iraq, implemented a plan in El Salvador under which tens of thousands Salvadorans "disappeared" or were murdered, including Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns.

Colonel Steele has been assigned to the new counter-insurgence unit known as the Special Police Commando, which operates under the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said Kucinich.

A 1996 investigation by US journalist Robert Parry, who formerly worked as a reporter for Associated Press, Newsweek and PBS TV, revealed that Posada reported to two FBI officers on his participation in the huge drug trafficking and weapon smuggling operation at the orders of Colonel Steele, a close ally of Colonel Oliver North and his bosses in the White House.

In his book titled "Caminos del Guerrero" (Paths of the Guerilla), terrorist Posada Carriles boasts of his close links to Steele and wrote that in El Salvador, he, Felix Rodriguez Mendigutiand and Colonel Luis Orlando Rodriguez jointly cooperated with Colonel Steel outside their formal bounds of service."

In its article, the Granma newspaper points out that it is no surprise that -having such powerful allies- Posada now enjoys the protection and privileges that he is being given in El Paso, Texas.

At the same time that Posada is being held in that city, five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters remain in prison for having risked their lives by infiltrating Florida-based Cuban-American terrorist groups which served as faithful accomplices of the US' dirty wars against Latin America.

"I investigated this incident myself, and both of these women were shot from behind," said the investigator. "Nabiha's brains were splattered on her brother who was driving the car, since she was in the back seat."

The U.S. military said soldiers fired on the car after it entered a "clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post" after failing to stop despite "repeated visual and auditory warnings." The U.S. military said in a statement that "shots were fired to disable the vehicle."

The brother of the pregnant woman, Redam Nisaif Jassim, who was driving the car, told IPS that he neither saw nor heard any warnings by the U.S. military. Two men who witnessed the incident from a nearby home also said they saw no signs of any warning.

"These kinds of killings by the Americans happen daily in Iraq," said Jassim, "They gave no warning to us before killing my cousin and sister. Of course we know they have no respect for the lives of Iraqis."

The U.S. military claims the incident is being investigated.

The Haditha slaughter in which 24 Iraqis were killed is under investigation for the incident itself, and further for the cover-up, since the initial report given by the Marine Corps stated only that 15 civilian deaths were caused by a roadside bomb and fighting with insurgents.

In this case too, all signs point to a cover-up. "The area where they were killed by the Americans was completely unmarked," the human rights investigator told IPS. A warning sign at the place was put up after the two women were killed, he said.

Like the Haditha massacre, this incident too should be investigated both for the killing and the cover-up, he said.

According to the investigator, the U.S. troops who killed the two women made no attempt to assist them after the shooting.

The next day Redam Jassim was summoned to a local police station. "The Americans offered me 5,000 dollars, and told me it wasn't compensation but because of tradition," Jassim told IPS. The U.S. military pays usually 2,500 dollars compensation for killing an Iraqi. Jassim says he refused the payment.

The U.S. military recently announced in a Defence Department report provided to Congress that it paid out 19 million dollars in compensation to Iraqis last year -- half of which paid out by Marines in al-Anbar province west of Baghdad.

The military claimed the amount was paid in 600 separate incidents, but it is common knowledge in Iraq that the usual payout for a non-combat civilian death is 2,500 dollars.

A payment of 19 million dollars compensation at 2,500 dollars a person would suggest such killings in thousands.

Jassim told IPS and the human rights investigator that he was asked by the Americans' translator to sign a paper written in English. The family and their relatives live in a village called al-Muta'assim, a 40-minute drive from the main hospital in Samarra.. Most people there, like the Jassims, neither speak nor read English.

After he signed the paper, Jassim was offered 2,500 dollars by U.S. soldiers, which he again refused.

"It is clear the Americans tried to cheat him as well as cover up their tracks at the same time," the investigator told IPS. "Like in Haditha, this incident, along with so many others we cannot keep track of, requires a truly independent investigation, rather than one by the U.S. military."

Phone calls and emails to the U.S.. military spokesperson in Baghdad have not been returned.

The meeting marks the highest profile discussion of Iraq's future so far, and reflects the Bush administration's determination to exploit the two most promising developments in Iraq for many months - the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qa'eda in Iraq, and the completion of the first permanent post-war cabinet.

Mr Bush said the meeting would decide "how to best deploy America's resources in Iraq and achieve our shared goal of an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself".

But despite fierce domestic pressure to reduce troop levels before November's critical mid-term elections, there were growing signals that Gen George Casey, America's Iraq commander, may raise troop levels in the short-term.

Mr Bush said in his weekend radio address that "violence in Iraq may escalate" as terrorists tried to prove that they had survived the loss of their leader.

American commanders are also worried by the situation in the Sunni areas at the heart of the insurgency, where American units have complained of a shortage of men.

Mr Maliki pledged in a Washington Post article to confront the Shia militia, but his plan to "re-establish a state monopoly on weapons" could well generate a confrontation between ultra-religious gunmen and the fledgling Iraq security forces.

America's military would be drawn into any defining battle over who rules Iraq.

Gen Casey has already summoned his main reserve unit, a 3,500-man armoured brigade based in Kuwait and has alerted a Germany-based brigade that it may be needed soon.

Military planners have begun to assess the costs of keeping a 50,000-man force in Iraq for a protracted period of time. At present the total number of serving American troops is about 500,000.

The plan has not yet received presidential approval. But it would fit with the administration's belief that while troops numbers will fall, American forces will have to remain in Iraq beyond Mr Bush's departure from the White House in early 2009.

Military analysts have noted that significant American spending is already being committed to permanent bases in Iraq. They say Iraq's military may soon be able to fight by itself, but it cannot feed or supply itself and it has no air force to speak of.

The Camp David meeting will be attended by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, Gen Michael Hayden, the CIA director and Gen Peter Pace, America's top soldier.

He also announced details of tough new measures in Baghdad in an effort to win back control of the city's streets.

Some 40,000 Iraqi and US troops were put on the streets just after dawn as part of a crackdown ordered by Mr Maliki.

He has said he is willing to talk to some insurgents, as long as they do not have blood on their hands.

Meanwhile violence continued, with clashes breaking out between gunmen and security forces in the city's north.

No casualties were reported in the clashes, in the mainly Sunni Adhamiya district, which officials said lasted about half an hour.

A car bomb also exploded in northern Baghdad, killing at least two people and injuring 10, police said. A second car bomb exploded in another northern area, but no-one died.

Fears are high that al-Qaeda in Iraq is preparing new attacks after the killing of their leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Zarqawi's successor, named as Abu Hamza al-Mujahid, has reportedly vowed to defeat "crusaders and Shias" in Iraq.

'Capable people'

Mr Bush acknowledged that violence in Iraq would never be completely eliminated.

But he said intelligence gathered from raids after the death of Zarqawi was being used to track down insurgents.

"I was inspired to be able to visit the capital of a free and democratic Iraq," Mr Bush said of his visit on Tuesday, which gave Mr Maliki just five minutes' warning.

The US president had been chairing talks in the US on future policy in Iraq and had been due to speak to Mr Maliki via videophone.

He said the trip had banished any doubts about the new government's "will to go forward".

Mr Bush described the new prime minister's agenda and cabinet as "impressive".

"I came away with the feeling they're plenty capable people," he said.

Difference noticed

The new security measures will be the strictest imposed on Baghdad since the US-led invasion in 2003.

On Wednesday, the nightly evening curfew began at 2030, not 2300 as it did before, and will run until 0600.

Extra troops were posted throughout Baghdad in the morning, setting up new checkpoints to secure road travel in and around the city.

Residents said they had already noticed the difference, with more vehicles being stopped and searched and long queues building up as a result.

But the BBC's Hugh Sykes in Baghdad says checkpoints and patrols provide easy targets for car bombers, and ordering a suicide car bomber to pull over could prompt him to detonate, thereby helping him to achieve his objective.

Insurgents are to be targeted by snap raids, with the majority of resources deployed to the most dangerous areas of Baghdad.

But the question among Iraqis is whether this is just a show of force or whether it can make a dent in the daily bombings and shootings that claim at least 20 to 30 lives in the capital every day.

Bush's visit Tuesday was seen by many as a boost for al-Maliki, who is seeking to build momentum after al-Zarqawi's death and the appointment of defense and interior ministers following weeks of political stalemate.

Al-Zarqawi's successor, identified by the nom de guerre Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, vowed to defeat "crusaders and Shiites" in Iraq and said "holy warriors" in the country were stronger than ever, according to the new leader's first Web statement, posted Tuesday.

Underlining the threat, explosions struck oil-rich Kirkuk, killing at least 16 people. Kirkuk police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader said the attacks in the city 180 miles north of Baghdad were believed to be "a reaction to avenge the killing of al-Zarqawi."

Al-Qaida in Iraq has been increasingly focusing its attacks on Baghdad rather than on U.S. targets in western Iraq.

Security officials said 75,000 Iraqi and multinational forces would be deployed throughout Baghdad today, securing roads in and out of the city, establishing more checkpoints, launching raids against insurgent hideouts and calling in airstrikes if necessary.

"Baghdad is divided according to geographical area, and we know the al-Qaida leaders in each area," said Maj. Gen. Mahdi al-Gharrawi, commander of public order forces under the Interior Ministry.

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The operation, to be launched at 6 a.m. today, was to be the biggest of its kind in Baghdad since the U.S. handed over sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004, al-Gharrawi said.

Civilians have complained of random violence and detentions by Iraqi forces, especially the police, which are widely believed to have been infiltrated by sectarian "death squads."

Al-Gharrawi said there were plans for a single uniform to distinguish legitimate forces in the coming days.

Al-Maliki's plan additionally includes banning personal weapons and implementing a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, which hitherto had begun at 11 p.m. The new curfew was expected to begin Friday.

Al-Maliki said in his news conference the plan "will provide security and confront the terrorism and ... enable Iraqis to live in peace in Baghdad."

The Iraqi army launched a similar crackdown dubbed Operation Lightning in May 2005, deploying more than 40,000 Iraqi police and soldiers, backed by U.S. troops and air support. However, violence continued to spike and many Sunnis were alienated by the heavy-handed tactics concentrating on their neighborhoods.

So far in 2006, at least 3,829 Iraqi civilians and at least 754 Iraqi security forces have been killed in war-related violence. There have been at least 335 coalition troop deaths in 2006; of these at least 312 have been U.S. military.

The United States remains interested in a greater German involvement in Iraq according to a newspaper report on Friday. According to the Berlin daily Berliner Zeitung, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has asked his German counterpart Franz Josef Jung for help in training the Iraqi military in Baghdad. Germany's policy of only providing training assistance outside the borders of Iraq, however, will continue, Jung said at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday.

"We're contributing our part to the stabilization of Iraq," Jung said while also emphasizing that German assistance outside Iraq would continue.

Germany has participated in training Iraqi officers in both Hamburg and in the United Arab Emirates as part of a NATO mission begun in 2004 aimed at stabilizing the situation in Iraq. Some 1,000 Iraqi officers have been trained in Baghdad since then with a further 500 travelling to Europe for training. But Germany has consistently refused to become involved directly in Iraq -- a policy that has not changed since Chancellor Angela Merkel's election in the autumn of 2005. Nevertheless, Merkel's term in office has corresponded with a thawing of trans-Atlantic relations which had become frosty under Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schröder.

Despite the change of tone, however, a direct German involvement in Iraq would likely be extremely controversial. Schröder's outright refusal to get involved in Iraq, first voiced categorically during his 2002 campaign for the chancellery, was extraordinarily popular in Germany and led to his re-election that year. Four years later, the US presence in Iraq remains deeply unpopular in Germany.

The German military only recently pledged almost 800 troops to participate in a peace-keeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo during elections there at the end of July. German troops are likewise stationed in Afghanistan, Kosovo and off the Horn of Africa.

wes/Berliner Zeitung/dpa