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Police tackle war protesters after Bush dinner is disrupted

Rupert Cornwell
Saturday 24 August 2002 00:00 BST
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American police used pepper spray to disperse hundreds of demonstrators protesting against war with Iraq, near a hotel where President George Bush was addressing a Republican dinner.

Chanting "Drop Bush, not bombs", the protesters hammered on the bonnets of police cars and taunted Bush supporters as they arrived for the fund-raising event in Portland, Oregon, for the re-election campaign of the state's Republican senator, Gordon Smith.

Though relatively small in scale, the demonstration is further evidence of cooling national enthusiasm for a campaign to oust Iraq's President, Saddam Hussein – at least without compelling evidence that the threat he poses is great enough to justify the likely loss of American servicemen's lives and the cost of a war which the US would have to fight virtually alone.

A poll in USA Today yesterday showed that only 53 per cent of the population favours ground troops being sent to Iraq to achieve Mr Bush's goal of "regime change". That figure is down from 61 per cent in June, and a high of 74 per cent last November, when the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had just been toppled.

Unusually wide coverage has been given in the United States to statements by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, that Britain's main goal was to secure the return of United Nations weapons inspectors to Baghdad rather than to remove President Saddam from power forcibly.

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