The deaths of Uday and Qusay in Mosul, northern Iraq, thanks to an informer, were a high point for war planners.

A Newsweek poll of 1002 Americans this week showed 59 percent thought the Hussein killings were unlikely to reduce the number of attacks on US troops in Iraq, and 82 percent thought Saddam is still alive.

The week's events, according to the poll, inched Bush's job approval rating up from 55 to 57 percent from the last poll, conducted July 10-11.

Despite the Pentagon's tough decision to release gory photographs of the two brothers' corpses to convince Iraqis that the old regime was not returning, many remained skeptical.

US journalists and Democratic lawmakers, more emboldened than before the war, have pressed President George W. Bush on his accusations that Iraq had sought to purchase bomb-making uranium in Africa, and that Saddam had at his disposal weapons mass destruction.

On the question of whether Bush misled the US public on intelligence concerning Iraq to build his case for war, 56 percent thought he did not, while 39 percent thought he did.

The Newsweek poll found that 49 percent thought the administration did not misinterpret or misanalyze intelligence reports on banned weapons while 41 percent said it did.

As US troops and their families at home begin to chafe at the thought of a long-term presence in Iraq, during a costly reconstruction and an active guerrilla campaign that has killed at least 47 GIs since Bush declared hostilities over on May 1, commentators are more prone to use the term "quagmire," borrowed from the drawn-out US conflict in Vietnam.

The Pentagon's number-two, Paul Wolfowitz, is pleased with the progress but cannot rule out for the short term a spike in attacks on US troops to avenge the deaths of Uday and Quay.

US authorities are hopeful that more informants like the one who denounced Uday and Qusay's whereabouts will come forward now that Saddam's return is all but impossible.

And with the capture or deaths of 37 of 55 on the "most wanted" list, raids are now meant to flush out middle-level Baath party leaders, former police or soldiers of the Republican Guard.

One such informer led to the arrest of 13 people including several of Saddam's bodyguards, 4th Infantry Division commander Ray Odierno said.

However, soldiers on the ground unleashed their anger publicly this month on learning their stay in Iraq would be lengthened.

One soldier challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign. The groaning has even spread to military families of the 3rd Infantry Division back home.

The Pentagon reacted quickly, announcing on Wednesday a large rotation of US troops by April 2004.

Wolfowitz, said he returned hopeful from a tour of Iraq, where great strides had been made.

"There is no humanitarian crisis. There is no refugee crisis. There is no health crisis. There has been minimal damage to infrastructure; minimal war damage, lots of regime damage over decades, but minimal war damage to infrastructure except for telecommunications, which we had to target.

"There has been no environmental catastrophe, either from oil well fires or from dam breaks. And there has been no need for massive oil field repair."

However, the principal instigator of the war on Saddam made a rare admission: Three of the assumptions that went into planning for the war turned out to be wrong.

"No army units -- at least none of any significant size -- came over to our side so that we could use them as Iraqi forces with us today.

"Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul.

"Third, and worst of all, it was difficult to imagine before the war that the criminal gang of sadists and gangsters who have run Iraq for 35 years would continue fighting."

WAR.WIRE