U.S. military deaths in Iraq in October reached 100 Monday, making this the deadliest month for American troops in a year.

The death toll mounted as militias and al Qaeda staged fierce battles in Baghdad and other parts of the country, despite a four-month security crackdown in the capital and additional U.S. troops on the ground.

The spike in the unrelenting violence has been blamed on the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when attacks generally rise, and on increased patrols in tense areas.

The Pentagon also said that insurgents fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces were motivated by the November 7 congressional elections in the United States.

"The level of attacks has gone up, true," said Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff. "What is the reason for that? Ramadan is one and because of our elections."

"It would seem that if they can increase the violence, they can increase opposition to the war and have an influence against the president," Ruff told reporters Friday, discussing the month's rising death toll.

Defense officials did not say what information had led them to that conclusion. Ruff said he had not seen intelligence to back it up.

He and others have also declined to say whether the Pentagon expects attacks to decline after the elections, in which polls show Bush's Republican party may lose control of Congress due in large part to anger over Iraq.

Ruff stopped short of saying insurgents in Iraq or Al Qaeda want Democrats to take control of Congress.

The death of a Marine in western Anbar province Sunday, announced by the U.S. military Monday, brought U.S. military deaths in Iraq to 100 for October.

November 2004 was the deadliest of 42 months of war for Americans, when 137 died. In April 2004, 135 died. Defense officials attributed those tolls to offensives in Falluja.

In all, more than 2,800 have died in Iraq, the military says. There are about 147,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

The United Nations estimates more than 100 civilians die every week in Iraq. More than 300 Iraqi police and troops died during Ramadan, according to U.S. Gen. George Casey.

U.S. and Iraqi forces are engaged in intense, regular battles in Baghdad and Anbar. The violence swept away any hope in the Pentagon of reducing U.S. troop levels soon and has led the Bush administration to press Iraq's government to take on more responsibility for security.

In Baghdad, blast kills 33 Iraqis in Shiite stronghold of Sadr City.

Baghdad, Iraq - A bomb tore through food stalls and kiosks in a sprawling Shiite slum Monday, killing at least 33 people, while the U.S. military announced the death of the 100th servicemember in Iraq this month.

The 6:15 a.m. explosion in Sadr City targeted poor Shiites who gather there each morning hoping to be hired as construction workers. At least 59 people were wounded, said police Maj. Hashim al-Yasiri.

Meanwhile, new details emerged about a U.S. soldier who went missing last week, sparking a massive manhunt. A woman claiming to be his mother-in-law said Monday that the soldier was married to a Baghdad college student and was with the young woman and her family when hooded gunmen handcuffed and threw him in the back seat of a white Mercedes. The marriage would violate military regulations.

Inciting Shiite Revenge?

The area of Monday's attack, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has witnessed repeated bombings by suspected al-Qaida fighters seeking to incite Shiite revenge attacks and drag the country into full-blown civil war.

Ali Abdul-Ridha, being treated for head and shoulder wounds at a hospital, said he was waiting for a job with his brother and about 100 others when he heard a massive explosion and "lost sight of everything."

The U.S. and Iraqi military have kept a tight cordon around Sadr City since a raid last week in search of an alleged Shiite death squad leader, who was not found.

Abdul-Ridha said the area had been exposed to attack because U.S. and Iraqi forces had driven Mahdi fighters who usually provide protection into hiding.

"That forced Mahdi Army members, who were patrolling the streets, to vanish," Abdul-Ridha, 41, said from his bed in al-Sadr Hospital.

"We Are Poor People"

However, Falih Jabar, a 37-year-old father of two boys, said the Mahdi Army was responsible for provoking extremists to attack civilians in the neighborhood of 2.5 million people.

"We are poor people just looking to make a living. We have nothing to do with any conflict," said Jabar, who suffered back wounds. "If (the extremists) have problems with the Mahdi Army, they must fight them, not us."

The last major bombing in Sadr City occurred on Sept. 23 when a bomb hidden in a barrel blew up a kerosene tanker, killing at least 35 people waiting to stock up on fuel for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Fourth Deadliest Month for GIs

October has seen rising civilian casualties and has been the fourth deadliest month for American troops since the war began in March 2003. The highest was November 2004, with 137 killed, followed by 135 in April 2004 and 107 in January 2005.

The U.S. military identified the latest casualty as a Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 who died in combat Sunday in Anbar province west of Baghdad, a hotbed of Sunni resistance to U.S. forces and their Iraqi government allies. The Marine's name was withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Missing Soldier

In Baghdad, the Iraqi woman claiming to be the missing soldier's mother-in-law said several of his in-laws put up a desperate struggle to stop the abduction.

The U.S. military has said the soldier was of Iraqi descent and that he was visiting family in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karadah when he was abducted. It did not identify the soldier or give further details. The soldier's inlaws said his name is Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie.

The woman, who identified herself as Latifah Isfieh Nasser, told The Associated Press in the family home in Karadah that her daughter, 26-year-old physics student Israa Abdul-Satar, met her husband a year ago and the couple were married in August and spent their honeymoon in Egypt. She showed an AP reporter photographs of the couple in Cairo.

Ultimatum for al-Maliki

Since a brief lull during Muslim holy days last week, violence has rebounded sharply, marring U.S. efforts to bring Sunni insurgents into a reconciliation process.

Last week also saw an embarrassing public squabble between the U.S. and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki over a schedule for achieving breakthroughs in security and political goals.

Political tensions deepened further Sunday when Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the country's ranking Sunni politician, threatened to resign if al-Maliki did not move swiftly to eradicate militia groups.

Mohammed Shaker, a key aide to al-Hashemi, said the threat was intended to send a message to the government over the rising sectarian violence. "We cannot live with this situation indefinitely," he said.

Al-Maliki depends heavily on the backing of a pair of Shiite political organizations and has resisted American pressure to eradicate their private armies - al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, the military wing of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political bloc, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The gunmen, especially those of the Mahdi Army, have been deeply involved in months of sectarian killings in Baghdad and central Iraq.

The militias have also infiltrated the predominantly Shiite security forces, who suffered around 300 deaths during Ramadan, mainly at the hands of Sunni insurgents but also in fighting between police and militia fighters.

At least 26 policemen were killed Sunday. In one attack in Basra, gunmen dragged 15 policemen and two translators - instructors at the Basra police academy - off a bus at the edge of the city Sunday afternoon. Their bodies were found dumped throughout the city hours later.

Other Deadly Attacks

Three other policemen were killed when a car bomb hit a patrol Sunday night in northeastern Baghdad's Bunook neighborhood, police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said.

On Monday, unknown gunmen killed Essam al-Rawi, head of the University Professor's Union and a senior member of the hardline Sunni group, the Association of Muslim Scholars. One of his bodyguards was also killed.

The association, which is believed to have links to the insurgency, has boycotted elections and other aspects of the political process that seeks to bring stability and end rampant sectarian violence.

At least 154 university professors have been killed since the March 2003 U.S. invasion, Education Ministry spokesman Basil al-Khatib said Monday. Hundreds, possibly thousands, more are believed to have fled to neighboring countries.

While sectarian hatred is blamed for some of those attacks, professors have also been killed because of past membership in Saddam Hussein's now-outlawed Baath Party, or by students angered over poor grades or with other grievances.

Last week, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and senior White House officials, in hopes of shoring up the GOP's sagging poll numbers before the November 7 midterm election, went on a media blitz, granting on-the-record interviews to dozens of conservative print and broadcast reporters. One of those interviews resulted in a backlash against the White House when Cheney told a reporter that, for him, water-boarding, a controversial technique used against terror suspects that simulates drowning, was a "no brainer."

But poring through another transcript revealed statements made by President Bush during a lengthy interview at the White House with conservative columnists that are equally disturbing but that have not been reported with the same gusto and zeal as the reports that Cheney backed water torture.

While discussing the situation in Iraq and explaining the reasons the United States launched a pre-emptive strike against the country, Bush told the journalists that "I believe when you get attacked and somebody declares war on you, you fight back. And that's what we're doing," according to a transcript of the interview.

Continuing to distort the facts, Bush added that "there's some 25 percent or so that want us to get out, shouldn't have been out there in the first place - and that's fine. They're wrong. But you can understand why they feel that way. They just don't believe in war, and - at any cost."

"If we leave, they will follow us here," Bush added.

For President Bush to say publicly that the United States attacked Iraq because of 9/11 is an insult to the more than 2,809 men and women who have died in combat in Iraq and tens of thousands of other soldiers who were maimed, believing they were fighting a war predicated on finding weapons of mass destruction. But Bush is desperate. His ratings have slipped below 35 percent. The public is growing frustrated and tired of the Iraq war. Republicans in Congress fear that they will lose control of the House to Democrats. What to do? Once again, get the public to believe Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and that the war was justified.

Those egregiously false statements have been debunked dozens of times over the course of the three-year war. Iraq did not possess caches of biological and chemical weapons, nor was the country involved in any aspect of the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, more than half the country is of the opinion that the Iraq war was a terrible mistake, and as US military casualties and violence in the war-torn country continue to surge on a near-daily basis, the number of people who would like to see a swift exit grows.

You would be hard-pressed to find any reporter express outrage at the blatant disinformation Bush peddled to them in an attempt to sway the election. Instead, the columnists joked with the president, laughed at his one-liners, and then published or broadcast Bush's statements as fact without challenging the veracity of his remarks.

During the interview between the president and reporters on Wednesday, Bush dismissed the violence on the ground as a mere side effect of the Muslim holiday Ramadan.

"I believe these people - oh, I was going to tell you [General John] Abizaid believes Ramadan, no question, caused them to be more violent because he says there's some kind of reward during Ramadan for violence," Bush said matter-of-factly. "I'm trying to figure out a matrix that says things are getting better. I think that one way to measure is less violence than before, I guess. We'll have to see what happens here after Ramadan ... Anyway, that's where my - that's what I'm thinking about these days. Upbeat about things."

Ramadan ended October 23. The interview with the columnists took place on October 25. Since then, military officials have confirmed that October has been one of the deadliest months in Iraq for US troops. The latest figure pegs US military casualties at 96. Violence is escalating, not abating. Bush claims the violence in Iraq is isolated to just a small part of the country - Baghdad, a city with a population of six million - and things are just rosy in the rest of the country.

"You know, 90 percent of the action is in five provinces out of 17," he said. "And it's a 30-mile circle around Baghdad. In other words, there's a lot of territory there that they're beginning to recover. And there are ways to measure that. You know, agricultural production is up. Things are happening. It's an entrepreneurial group of people."

Perhaps realizing how outrageous he sounds amidst the bad news coming out of Iraq, Bush admitted he may be a bit naive in his upbeat analysis.

"Don't be writing - don't write me down as hopelessly naive and trying to always put lipstick on the pig," the president told the reporters. The reporters obliged.