He said the insurgents' biggest weapon was their ability to instill fear. ''I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections," Lessel said.
''If you look over the last six months, they have steadily escalated the barbaric nature of the attacks they have been committing. A year ago, you didn't see these kinds of horrific things," he said.
In Washington, President Bush expressed optimism about the Jan. 30 elections, saying they will be ''an incredibly hopeful experience," despite rising violence and doubts that the vote will bring stability and democracy.
''I know it's hard, but it's hard for a reason," Bush said, adding that the insurgents are trying to impede the elections because they fear freedom. He acknowledged security problems in four of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Meanwhile, a Pentagon official said the United States was holding 325 foreign fighters in Iraq, up from 140 before the November invasion of Fallujah, according to a report in today's New York Times, which did not identify the official.
The comments were made amid an escalating insurgency before the parliamentary vote believed to be led by minority Sunnis who dominated the country during Saddam Hussein's regime. In the election -- the first democratic vote in Iraq since the country was formed in 1932 -- the Sunnis are certain to lose their dominance to the Shi'ites, who account for 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million population.
Reflecting Shi'ites' demands to hold the vote as scheduled, and Sunnis' calls for a boycott or postponement, two senior religious leaders expressed sharply differing views during Friday prayers.
''We want all the Iraqis to participate, we also insist on holding the elections as scheduled and to put these elections behind us as a way to end the conflict in Iraq," Saadr Aldeen al-Qubbanji, a leader of a prominent Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said in the southern city of Najaf.
