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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.
