Two World Views About Iraq

From McClatchy News

As President Bush insisted Thursday that the Iraq government is making progress, noisy demonstrations filled the streets in Baghdad and the southern port city of Basra to protest the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

Protesters in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim Sadr City neighborhood carried a red coffin with Maliki's picture on it crossed out with a black marker. Under his face were the words "The New Dictator."

"They're trying to build a modern democracy on the rubble of three decades of tyranny, in a region of the world that has been hostile to freedom," Bush told an audience of about 1,000 people at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio , "and they're doing it while under assault from one of history's most brutal terrorist networks."

The protests came on the third day of a U.S.-supported Iraqi security offensive against Shiite militants in Basra that's spread to neighboring provinces and to Baghdad .

In Baghdad , the Green Zone where U.S. and Iraqi leaders live and work continued to come under heavy mortar fire. On Monday, Paul Converse , a U.S. citizen who works there, died from his injuries, and three other Americans and a Jordanian citizen are receiving treatment for their injuries.

In Sadr City, the death toll rose from 20 to 38, and in Wasit province 40 civilians have been killed since Tuesday, police chief Gen. Abdul Hanin Saleh said.