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Thursday, September 7, 2006
Atlanta protesters assail Bush
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A crowd of about 80 protesters brought an array of signs and occasional touches of guerrilla theatre as they lined South Cobb Drive for almost two hours Thursday morning to denounce the Iraq war and President Bush’s speech on combating terrorism at the Cobb Galleria.
The group included nine people clad in bright orange prison jumpsuits and four protesters had covered their heads with black hoods to symbolize detainees held in the war against terror.
Justin Carter of Atlanta, a sophomore at Georgia State University, said he was wearing a prisoner’s outfit “to try and bring attention to detainees being held all over the world on bogus charges.”
Four of the protesters had covered their heads with black hoods to symbolize detainees held in the war against terror.
“U.S. out of the Middle East! No justice, no peace!” chanted protesters, accompanied by a dirge-like drum beat from a colleague. Deborah Cornelius and Julie Robertson donned male clothing and rubber masks and trod the sidewalk to mock the nation’s two top elected officials. Cornelius, a Decatur resident who grows plants for business and professional offices, posed as a grinning George Bush as she held a makeshift book labeled “My Pet Goat “ — the story the president was reading with a class of Florida school children when he was told of the 9/11 attack. She also carried an oil container labeled “Noble Cause Motor Oil.”
Robertson, an Atlanta artist, wore a Dick Cheney mask, complete with wire rimmed glasses, as she trailed behind Cornelius, controlling “Bush” with marionette strings. The protesters initially numbered about two dozen as they gathered aroud 9 a.m. along the sidewalk on the Cumberland Mall side of south Cobb Parkway. As the crowd grew, they were moved by Cobb Sheriff’s deputies to a public sidewalk near the Galleria’s entrance, well out of eyesight from seeing the president enter the Galleria. They were a long distance from where Bush would be entering the mall.
Passing traffic passing along South Cobb Drive proceeded without hindrance; a couple motorists blew their horns. occasional others flashed their lights. “This is a work day,” said Dianne Mathiowetz, of the International Action Center, Atlanta, and a veteran local activist “I believe everybody here represents 1,000, maybe 2,000 people who would love to join us, but they can’t. They have to work, and be paid substandard wages.
Also among the organizers of the protest was the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition and which has arranged several local peace demonstrations against the Iraq War.
But Mathiowetz added that Thursday’s protest was “not just to demand the troops come home now. “We want Bush to know he can’t go anywhere without meeting a majority of 60 percent in this country as long as he continues to send our men and women to kill and be killed in a senseless and brutal war,” she said.
“We’re trying to spread democracy around the world, and we’re losing here at home,” said Tim Franzen, a Marietta therapist for adolescent children as he counted the ten police cars parked along South Cobb Drive. “They need this many cops to watch us?”
Heather Barbour, an Atlanta elementary school teacher, supported a large banner with a picture of Bush that asked that “Got Fascism?” mocked the president’s characterization of the “war on terror” as a battle with radical Islamist “fascists.”
“He’s trying to tie it in with World War II, which was a unifying cause. But he has it wrong — his ‘war on terror’ is closer to Vietnam — it’s a war that can’t be won with anything that could be called ‘victory.’” Most of the signs mocked Bush and criticized the invasion of Iraq and warned against any military strike on Iran. Maxwell Goberman, however, carried a black, foam board coffin in memory of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. “The People of New Orleans — Victims treated as criminals and left for dead.”
“We let the people of New Orleans die and wait for rescue while the government did nothing —- now that’s bad management,” said Goberman. Most of the signs mocked Bush and criticized the invasion of Iraq and warned against any military strike on Iran. However, at least two were critical of Israel, alleging excessive use of force in Lebanon.
The protest folded their signs and banners around 10:40 a.m. “This is our decision to leave now,” said Mathiowetz. “We know Bush’s car isn’t going to pass us, and that doesn’t matter. We have made our point.”
Bush: Terrorists will face “unrelenting pressure”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President George W. Bush told a crowd of about 600 in Cobb County Thursday that Americans are safer in the war on terror because of steps that his adminsitration has taken.
Bush, who gave his 30-minute address to an invited audience at the Cobb Galleria Center, billed his speech as “a progress report on the steps taken since 9/11 to protect our people.”
“In order to protect this country, we will keep steady pressure, unrelenting pressure, on Al Qaeda and its associates,” Bush said to applause during the speech.
The president landed at Dobbins Air Force Base at around 10 a.m. where he was met by Gov. Sonny Perdue. His motorcade then proceeded to the Cobb Galleria Center.
The president said the country “still faces determined enemies, and we will not be safe until those enemies are finally defeated.”
He issued a call for the country to stay the course in Iraq.
Recalling the memory of Army 1st Lt. Noah Harris of Ellijay, who died in in Iraq last year, Bush said to his greatest applause: “We will stay, we will fight, and we will win in Iraq.”
The speech was sponsored by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Afterward, the president headed back to Dobbins, where he met the Little League World Series championship team from Columbus on an air strip before leaving aboard Air Force One shortly before noon.
The team gave the president a pair of baseballs, team caps and t-shirts signed by the team. On the back of the caps, they wrote “W” and “First Lady.”
The players all wore t-shirts of the team-color powder blue with red lettering on the front that bragged: “Columbus, Georgia, 2006 Little League World Series Champions.”
“This is an ultimate honor for them,” said Coach Randy Morris. “Only a select amount of people has the chance to meet the man who runs this country. For these 12-year-olds to win the championship, to meet the president, is a dream for them.”
Before his address, a crowd of about 70 antiwar protesters gathered outside the mall.
The group included nine young men clad in bright orange prison jumpsuits.
Justin Carter of Atlanta, a sophomore at Georgia State University, said he was wearing a prisoner’s outfit “to try and bring attention to detainees being held all over the world on bogus charges.” Four of the protesters had covered their heads with black hoods to symbolize detainees held in the war against terror.
“U.S. out of the Middle East! No justice, no peace!” chanted protesters, beating on a drum.
The first protesters gathered on the sidewalk on the Cumberland Mall side of south Cobb Parkway. As the crowd grew, they were moved by Cobb Sheriff’s deputies to a public sidewalk near the Galleria’s entrance. They were a long distance from where Bush would be entering the mall.
The protest was organized by a number of antiwar, anti-Bush organizations. The umbrella organization is the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, which has arranged at least four local protests in recent months. It dispersed shortly before 11 a.m.
Diane Mathiowetz, of the International Action Center of Atlanta, a longtime activist, said the protest was “not just to demand the troops come home now.
“We want Bush to know he can’t go anywhere without meeting a majority of 60 percent in this country as long as he continues to send our men and women to kill and be killed in a senseless and brutal war,” she said.
Bush left Dobbins just before noon enroute to to Coastal Georgia to stump for Republican congressional candidate Max Burns, and arrived there about 12:45 p.m.
Burns, a former Screven County commissioner, was first elected to Congress in 2002 and is trying to regain his congressional seat lost to John Barrow, a Democrat, in the 2004 election. A crowd of about 500 gathered for the fundraiser at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler, paying either $250, $500 or $4,200 a ticket.
Bush made remarks for about a half hour. His remarks ranged from flying on Air Force One with Perdue, “He’s the kind of guy, frankly, Texas voters would be comfortable with,” to No Child Left Behind, to the economy, to the war.
Bush said he understands that Americans are “troubled by the death and destruction they see on their television screen,” and that such compassion speaks well of the nation’s character. But if the country pulls out of Iraq now, Bush said, “we will have failed when history looks back. We will have said to our enemies, we will give you a victory. We will have said to our friends, you can’t count on us.”
The president recalled his recent trip to Graceland with Japan’s prime minister, noting such an event would have been unthinkable in the days after World War II.
“Liberty has the capacity to convert enemies into allies,” he said.
Staff writers Tom Baxter, Jennifer Brett and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
