Bush Tells Anaheim Audience U.S. Will Retaliate for Terror

If Libya or any other terrorist nation sponsors an act of terrorism, the United States will retaliate, Vice President George Bush said at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim Sunday night.

When President Reagan decided to bomb Libya, the decision was not an easy one, Bush said. But after Leon Klinghoffer was executed aboard the Achille Lauro and after Seaman Robert Stethem was shot aboard TWA Flight 847, both after hijackings, “we thought: If we don’t defend the cause of freedom, who will? If we don’t stand up and protect our people, who will?” Bush said.

“And we acted. Not with pleasure. Not with any Rambo psychoses. But with concern for the future of freedom if we did not act.”

Bush was in Orange County to speak at a glittering $200-a-plate

fund-raising dinner for Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove).

Earlier in the day Sunday, Bush spoke at a Cinco de Mayo celebration in Santa Ana Stadium, where the vice president drew applause from the crowd of 6,000 when he praised Latinos for their traditional family values.

And he drew on a Latino family connection of his own: His daughter-in-law is a Mexican citizen, he said, and “our three grand kids can habla that Espanol, and I’m very proud of it, I’ll tell you.”

Bush also singled out three Santa Ana natives, one an activist Democrat, for praise. He mentioned attorney Mike Silva and businessman Bob Miranda, both members of the Santiago Club, a Santa Ana business club that organized the event as part of the community’s Cinco de Mayo festivities. (The holiday marks the Mexican army’s victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862.)

But he then gave special attention to a third member, Democrat Miguel Pulido Jr., 30, whose family successfully battled the city of Santa Ana to save their muffler shop from demolition for redevelopment.

Pulido has been so successful, Bush said, that “I can’t figure out why he hasn’t become a Republican yet.” Pulido, a board member of Orange County’s Democratic Associates, said later that he is pleased by the attention both Bush and Dornan lavished on him Sunday but that he does not intend to switch parties.

Later, at the evening fund-raiser for Dornan at the Disneyland Hotel, Bush turned his attention to the congressman, who is seeking reelection to a second term in his Orange County district. Bush praised Dornan for being “a loyal supporter of President Reagan” and for helping prevent tax increases.

Bush said Dornan last year rounded up a third of his House colleagues and got them to sign a letter saying that if Reagan vetoed a government spending bill, they would back up the President.

“What Bob Dornan did, in effect, was to make the President’s efforts to curb spending veto-proof. Afterward, the President said: ‘Bob, you made my day.”’

Bush’s appearance Sunday was expected to net more than $125,000 for Dornan’s reelection campaign.

As the fund-raiser began, about 100 pickets organized by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 681 walked outside the hotel’s Cerritos Avenue entrance chanting: “Boycott the Disneyland Hotel.”

Bush and his entourage successfully detoured around the pickets and arrived at a different entrance.

The hotel’s nearly 1,200 restaurant workers have been working without a contract since Feb. 28. As the union had predicted, the picketing Sunday was loud but orderly.