(Adds protest quotes, CBS poll; Reid, Rice quotes)

By Sue Pleming and Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Thursday hammered President George W. Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq, leaving the White House increasingly isolated over deepening American involvement in the unpopular war.

Some of Bush's fellow Republicans joined newly empowered Democrats in voicing skepticism that dispatching 21,500 extra troops to help Iraq's beleaguered government regain control of Baghdad would work.

American peace activists held the first of what they said would be thousands of protests, vowing to take to the airwaves and the Internet in a campaign to block the plan, which they said had fueled a fresh surge of anti-war sentiment.

A day after his televised White House speech announcing the plan, Bush told army personnel and their families in Fort Benning, Georgia, it was the "best chance of success" but would not have an immediate impact in quelling violence.

"Yet over time we can expect to see positive results and that would be the Iraqis chasing down the murderers," he said.

Democrats who want a phased withdrawal from Iraq to start in four to six months, quickly lambasted Bush's plan.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he expects to have the votes, with the support of some Republicans, to pass a resolution opposing the new deployment, which would bring American troop levels in Iraq to more than 150,000.

Though such a resolution is nonbinding and merely reflects opposition in the Senate, Reid said, "I think that (bipartisan passage) will be the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq."

Democrats, who control Congress after November elections seen largely as an anti-war referendum, spearheaded the challenge to Bush's new policy in a conflict that has killed more than 3,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

But leading Democrats stopped short of threatening to block funding for the new forces, mindful that would give Bush and his allies a chance to accuse them of abandoning the troops.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, its Democratic chairman Delaware Sen. Joe Biden called Bush's plan a "tragic mistake."

Signaling widening cracks within Bush's own Republican Party over his Iraq policy, not a single committee member spoke out in his support, and a few offered pointed criticism.

"This speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam if it's carried out," said Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, like Biden a potential 2008 White House contender.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who had lobbied hard for a troop increase, said it was the right decision, though failure could unleash chaos in the region.

Rice insisted that Bush's plan would put more pressure on Iraqis to take over their own security, something that was vital to any eventual U.S. pullback.

But she warned that Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Iraq government was on "borrowed time" to restore security.

'MONTHS NOT YEARS' FOR TROOP INCREASES

Anti-war activists said 1,000 protests were scheduled for Thursday night in all 50 states ahead of a Jan. 27 march in Washington that they expect to draw hundreds of thousands.

Several hundred demonstrators holding candles gathered on across from the White House on Thursday evening, many with signs that said: "No more troops!"

"I think we're sending more troops in to be shot at, target practice," said David Luria, 70, a photographer.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he did not know how long additional troops would stay in Iraq but he thought it would be "a matter of months, not 18 months or two years."

"We clearly will know ... within a couple of months or so whether this strategy is beginning to bear fruit," he told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.

Gates said extra troops would be sent in waves and that they might not all go if the Iraqi government did not keep its end of the bargain. Bush set no deadlines for the Iraqis.

Under the plan aimed at halting a collapse into civil war, Iraqi troops are to help sweep Baghdad neighborhoods clean of insurgents regardless of sectarian influences.

Early on Thursday, U.S. forces stormed an Iranian government representative's office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil and arrested five employees, including diplomats and staff, Iranian officials said.

The U.S. military, without mentioning Iranians, said six people had been arrested in the operation, which came after Bush vowed to disrupt what he called the "flow of support" from Iran and Syria for insurgent attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll showed he will have a hard sell with the American public, with 61 percent opposed to sending more troops and 36 percent supporting it. A CBS poll showed 30 percent believed the troop increase was a bad idea.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan and Tabassum Zakaria at Fort Benning; and Steve Holland, Jeremy Pelofsky, Kristin Roberts and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Sophie Walker and Paul Majendie in London; and Ibon Villelabeitia in Baghdad)

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