NEWPORT, R.I. - President Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq, saying Thursday the US goal there is not to eliminate attacks but to enable a democracy that can function despite violence.

President Bush delivers a speech at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Thursday, June 28, 2007. [AP]

With his Iraq policy under increasing criticism from the public and lawmakers in both parties, Bush went to the US Naval War College to declare progress and plead for patience. At the same time, his top national security went to Capitol Hill to hear out Republican critics.

Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said this week US troops should start leaving now because Bush's strategy will not have time to work.

National security adviser Stephen Hadley met with Lugar, GOP Sen. John Warner of Virginia and others. Warner said a defense policy bill expected to attract several war-related amendments in July was a main topic.

The White House thought it had until an expected September assessment by military commanders before facing a showdown on the unpopular war.

But a majority of senators now believes troops should start coming home in the next few months. House Republicans want to revive the independent Iraq Study Group to get new options.

Bush sought in his speech to put the brakes on these efforts.

He characterized the fight in Iraq, where tensions between Shiite and Sunni factions have kept the country in a cycle of violence, as primarily against al-Qaida forces and their use of grisly suicide attacks and car bombings.

"They understand that sensational images are the best way to overwhelm the quiet progress on the ground," Bush said.

The president laid out in some of his plainest terms yet how to determine when the US presence in Iraq has achieved its goals. This, Bush said, is "the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens and function as a democracy even amid violence."

"Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy's ability to get a car bombing in the evening news," he said. "No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street."

He suggested Israel, the frequent target of terrorist attacks and a country in a decades-long, intractable and often violent dispute with Palestinians, as a standard to strive for.

"In places like Israel, terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks," Bush said. "The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're looking for in Iraq."

It was likely to be controversial - and possibly even explosive - for Bush to set out Israel as a model for a Muslim Middle Eastern nation.

Aside from Israel's security problems, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is such a sensitive issue in the Muslim world that it has become a rallying cry for many and major recruiting tool for Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaida.

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