Although the results of the vote for a national assembly were not due for weeks, Bush went before the television cameras hours after polls closed Sunday to declare the ballot a "great and historic achievement."

The president and his top aides were clearly upbeat after getting past their gamble to stick with the elections amid a murderous campaign of intimidation by insurgents and threats by many Sunni Muslims to boycott.

Bush stood firm despite questions about the polls' credibility and predictions by some analysts that they could intensify bloodshed by driving a wedge deeper between majority Shia Muslims and minority Sunnis.

For weeks, administration officials had been playing down expectations of the vote and refusing to set a threshold for acceptable turnout. Bush said last week the fact the elections were being held at all made it a success.

But with turnout estimated at nearly 60 percent -- better than in most US elections despite a wave of attacks that killed 37 people -- and even foreign experts declaring that the ballot had generally met international norms, the administration was exultant.

If Bush said that "the Iraqi people themselves made this election a resounding success," his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also seeing it as a victory for US staying power.

"This is a great day for an America that has always been associated with the march of freedom and trying to help those who want to aspire to freedom," Rice told Fox News Sunday.