MOYERS: Welcome to NOW. In Baghdad today, an American soldier buying DVDs in a local shop was shot in the head. Earlier this morning, several American soldiers were driving to Baghdad to make telephone calls to their families back here in the States. On a dirt road northwest of the capital, an explosive device went off. Some of the soldiers were wounded and had to be evacuated by helicopter.

And even earlier, a GI was ambushed and killed while investigating a car theft. Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1st, at least 21 American and six British soldiers have died from hostile fire. The Iraqi Resistance continues to increase and Washington is worried. The Pentagon has sent a team of outside experts to assess what's going wrong. And companies seeking to invest in the rebuilding of Iraq have been told by a private intelligence firm that there's an even chance Iraq could be slipping into revolt. National Public Radio's, Deborah Amos, has been in Baghdad for the last month. And she is with us now by.

Does your reporting show that these attacks on Americans and British troops are the result of organized resistance, or are they simply isolated events?

AMOS: The military continues to say here that there is no organization to these attacks, it is just a spike over the last couple of days. No command and control. No one commander that they can go and catch and it will be all over. That they are small resistance groups around the country.

The big question is why. Are these the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime who are fighting for the old days? Or are these simply Iraqis who do not like the occupation and have decided to take a shot at the Americans all over the city?

MOYERS: So there's no evidence that you can discern that these attacks are organized?

AMOS: Bill, there's a couple of theories about what's going on here. And depending on which one you buy would have to do with which solution you choose. There are some people who say that this is a rump group of Saddam Hussein loyalists. I think the Secretary of Defense called them the dead-enders of the Saddam regime.

And the reason that they are attacking American and British soldiers is because they want to wear them down and get them out of here. And so that's why these attacks continue. There are other people who say it's not that at all. It's Iraqis who are disillusioned with the occupation, angry over no electricity and no jobs, no salaries for two months.

And so they have taken potshots at American and British soldiers. Remember, this is a place where the citizenry are fully armed and they know how to use those weapons. So it's not out of the question that that's what it is. I think that nobody really can say which theory is correct. But there are two different solutions for it.

If you believe that these are remnants of the Saddam regime then you have to stamp them out. You have to be very aggressive, go town to town, find them, arrest them, sweep them up. If these are disgruntled Iraqis, what you have to do is you've got to speed up the reconstruction. You have to make sure people have electricity. You have to bring the anger down at what's happening here.

MOYERS: THE WASHINGTON POST had a story this week in which it said Americans are caught between a rock and a hard place.

That they're being sent out at night to look for some of Iraq's most wanted men, some of Saddam Hussein's old buddies, cronies, and killers. And so that, at night, for the sake of surprise, the American troops come in like SWAT teams, ramming down compound walls. Children cry. Women are terrified. And men are handcuffed and led away, sometimes with nylon bags over their heads.

More often than not, they are innocent, or family members of the target, or housekeepers or guards, and later released.

But nonetheless, this is creating a great sense of injustice among the Iraqi people. Is that your understanding?

AMOS: It is, Bill. And I've talked to families who actually have been victims of some of those searches. In particular, when they have gotten the wrong person. And it does happen because of bad intelligence.

In the daytime, you will see American soldiers on the side of the road eating ice cream cones with kids, stopping and buying soft drinks and fruit. They take off their helmets. They look like the friendly policemen down the street.

But at night, they are conducting weapon searches and looking for armed groups. They knock down doors in the middle of the night. They scare children. I have been in homes where kids are scared of any stranger that comes in the house after one of these raids.

Sometimes they're successful, they do find armed men who are moving against them. But sometimes these are families who have nothing to do with the armed attack. And it does sort of fuel anger and resentment in those towns.

And while those people may not have been supporting the armed insurgence before, they certainly will after one of those evenings spent with the American troops, especially when the men come home and tell their wives that they have spent the night on the floor with their arms tied behind their back, and a bag over their head.

MOYERS: It is true that they're looking for some of Iraq's most-wanted men.

AMOS: They are. Although today, Bill, the British in southern Iraq have suspended their search for weapons. I think the British, they have concluded that this has been such a flash point that it's a good idea to just back off a little bit. A few days ago, as you know, six military policemen were cornered and killed in a police station in a small village.

It was a terrible event. The British say that they were killed in cold blood. What the villagers there say is that they didn't like it that the British were coming in the middle of the night. And worse still, say the villagers, that the British were bringing in sniffer dogs.

Now, for Islam, bringing a dog into the house is a great cultural crime. It's a mistake. Dogs are unclean. And they didn't like that the British were coming into their houses.

What the British have now done is backed off a bit. Decided that maybe it's not such a good idea to do these middle of the night raids. And perhaps that will cool the situation down.

MOYERS: Talk a moment about this collision of societies.

AMOS: There's quite a bit of that. Let me tell you a story about Falluja which is the town that is about an hour's drive north of here. It is a very conservative town. It's a place… and I've never seen this before in Baghdad. In the restaurants, there's a separate section for the women.

I've seen that in Saudi Arabia. But I've never seen that in Iraq. And it tells you just how conservative Falluja is. It's also a tribal place. They're… it's a clanic society and conservative. Back in April, there was a violent demonstration there. And American troops opened fire and killed 18 people there.

I have talked to psychiatrists who are working with troops in the field. And they explained to them that what has happened in Falluja is a blood feud. That in a tribal society, people are duty-bound to avenge civilian deaths. And that may be why some of the first shots were fired in Falluja.

It has taken a while for American troops to understand that. That there are ways around these kinds of conflicts. Ways for both sides to save face. But there is a huge cultural gap between American soldiers who remember, they came here to fight a war. They weren't trained to keep the peace. They've been given another job in the last couple of weeks because there were no other troops to do it.

They've had really very little cultural sensitivity training. And I know that sounds very PC but it really means something in these situations because the wrong moves can enflame a population when Americans don't really mean to but they do.

MOYERS: There was a story the other day about an American convoy passing through the neighborhood coincidentally at a time of a dispute on the street between two Iraqi men. One of the Iraqi men fired his pistol into the air and the Americans started shooting indiscriminately. Shooting up cars, shooting out store windows. Are American troops on edge there?

AMOS: Bill, I've certainly seen examples of that. When we drive around, we are in a car that has the back windows smoked out. That always makes me feel better when I'm in small villages because nobody can really see that I'm an American in the back until I choose to show them. However, on the road, we look like everybody else who's driving.

We've been behind military convoys where we've had soldiers point guns right at our windshield. It makes me very nervous when it happens. We always pull back as far as we can from them because they do feel like they're twitchy when they go under the overpasses here. You can see them shooting up, at least aiming up over the overpasses.

Out by the airport there have been a number of attacks on the American military from exactly those kind of overpasses where Iraqis can hide on the overpasses and shoot over the Americans as they drive through.

I think at this point, these soldiers are a bit twitchy. They are under attacks. Someone has died every day over the last two weeks. So it is understandable that when they look at a sea of Iraqi faces, they have no idea who may be the one to pull out that gun.

MOYERS: Do you see any evidence of progress? Are we doing some right things there?

AMOS: Well, I've been here for a month and Baghdad has changed an enormous amount. Restaurants are opening. Clothing stores are opening. I could buy a little pair of summer sandals up the street if I wanted to. That shop opened two days ago. You can now buy satellite dishes here.

That was illegal under Saddam Hussein's rule. They are very popular. And people are beginning to watch television from around the globe. That's very new for Iraqis. The problem is that some of the progress that was made in the early days, turning on the power, turning on the water, has been reversed.

Saboteurs have been after the electric plant, the electric water… excuse me — after the electric plant and the electric wires. In the past couple of days we've had huge blackouts in Baghdad. I know people who have had no electricity and no water for days. And that has fueled resentment here even as the temperatures have soared to over 100.

There has been progress. There's no doubt about that. Government ministries are finally bringing the people back to work. They're getting monthly salaries. The army which was dismissed a month ago, that problem seems to have been solved. The American-led administration is putting some of them back to work.

People have money in their pockets. But not everybody. There's rampant unemployment in this country. That has not been addressed yet. Businesses, private firms have not really been able to start up again because of insecurity. You can't import goods to sell if you can't get them over the border, if you worry they're going to be robbed before they get here.

So it would be wrong to say there hasn't been progress. There has been a lot of returning to normal. I feel… I see progress every day. But I also see steps backwards. That is what the problem is. The reconstruction is not going fast enough. The move towards democracy is not going fast enough. And people are very, very unhappy.

MOYERS: Before the invasion there were fears that the fall of Saddam would unleash new tribalism and new warfare between the Shiites and the Sunnis, between the factions and ethnic and religious factions of Iraq. Do you see evidence of that? Or is all of this violence and anger directed only at American and British troops?

AMOS: At the moment, it doesn't… all those early predictions seem to be not coming true. The war is not between the Sunnis and the Shias in this country, not yet anyway.

That may happen later, as politics begin to develop here. And that war will be nothing more than a political war. The Shias are 60 percent of this country. And they've not had a voice in this region, as in this particular part of the Middle East, for 300 years.

This is the first time that they've sensed that they have a chance. That they have a chance to develop a political leadership that represents them. And they want a voice in this government.

Now, as you know, Paul Bremer has held back on any elections here. He says he's going to appoint a political council. When that happens, we will begin to see how the Americans see the political power break down in the country.

Because we'll see who he puts on that political council. And everybody will be counting on their fingers, how many Shias, how many Sunnis, how many Kurds, how many Christians, how many women. It'll give us our first indication of how the Americans see the political power here. That's when you may see a bit of a break between the Sunnis and the Shias.

But in terms of who's shooting, I think we don't see that yet. I think security is the toughest, toughest problem for the military here. I also think giving Iraqis a voice in democracy is the toughest problem for the U.S.-led administration.

Iraqis are clamoring for it. They want to run their own affairs. The Americans are going very slow because they want to get it right. And sometimes I think that they really don't understand this country well enough, that there are enough Iraqis who can get it right.

They are ready to take over their own affairs. They want to. There needs to be an Iraqi face on the government here, even if it's for Iraqis to throw tomatoes at it when their electricity doesn't go on.

MOYERS: Deborah Amos, National Public Radio, you've been doing an outstanding job of reporting. Thank you for joining us on "NOW."

AMOS: Thanks Bill.