WASHINGTON — President Bush dismissed last weekend’s mass antiwar protests as well-intentioned but irrelevant — the equivalent of a marketing “focus group” — as the Defense Department ordered another 20,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf region Tuesday.
About 150,000 troops already are in place for a possible attack on Iraq, but the United States and Britain decided Tuesday to confront skeptics and propose one last United Nations resolution demanding that Iraq disarm, officials of both nations said.
At the White House, Bush said “democracy is a beautiful thing” and he supported the dissenters’ right to express their views. But he also said the protests wouldn’t influence his decisions or those of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his closest ally.
“You know, the size of protests is like deciding, well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group,” Bush said. “The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security — in this case, the security of the people.”
At the same time, the United States and Britain continued to pursue diplomacy at the United Nations, despite Tuesday’s resumption there of speeches generally critical of the U.S. position. But the diplomatic effort isn’t likely to delay U.S. military plans more than a few days, “if at all,” one senior administration official said on condition of anonymity.
“The administration is committed to going forward,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
He said a new resolution — “simple and rather straightforward” — would be proposed to the U.N. Security Council as early as Wednesday or as late as next week. Other U.S. officials, citing British pressures, predicted it would be offered Friday or Monday.
Bush summed up the delicate balance between diplomacy and war this way:
“War is my last choice. But the risk of doing nothing is even a worse option, as far as I’m concerned. I owe it to the American people to secure this country. I will do so.”
He said a new resolution “would be useful,” but he left the door open to act without one in case the effort falls short.
“We don’t need a second resolution,” he said. “It’s clear this guy (Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein) could even care less about the first resolution.”
White House officials declined to discuss the resolution’s proposed wording, but Fleischer said Bush would insist on language that followed through on U.N. Resolution 1441, which the U.N. approved in November. That resolution gave Hussein a “final opportunity” to disarm and warned of “serious consequences” if he didn’t comply.
“The key thing that the president wants to have in there is that it enforces Resolution 1441, making clear that ‘final’ meant ‘final’ and ‘serious consequences’ meant ‘serious consequences,’” Fleischer said.
In London, Blair signaled that the decision on a new resolution had been made.
“I want a second resolution if we go to military action, and I still think there is a lot of debate to go on before we get to the point of decision there in the United Nations,” Blair said.
Both nations suffered a setback Friday at the U.N. Security Council, when U.N. weapons inspectors reported modest but continuing progress in Iraq, and opponents of a military attack mustered considerable support.
An open debate on Iraq unfolded at the United Nations, as about 60 countries that aren’t on the 15-member Security Council expressed their views.
Such an open debate has no official effect on the council, and the meeting served largely as another forum for those who want to continue U.N. weapons inspections and slow the drive toward war.
Even Iran, which Iraq attacked with chemical weapons in the 1980s, argued that every effort should be made to avoid war.
“The prospect of another destabilizing war in our immediate vicinity is a nightmare scenario of death and destruction,” Iranian Ambassador Javad Zarif said.