Bush Says Protesters’ Wish Spells Trouble

Stepping up their response Tuesday to an antiwar movement that has gained momentum in recent weeks, President Bush and his aides said heeding protesters’ wishes to withdraw troops from Iraq would “weaken” the United States’ broader efforts to combat terrorism.

Bush made his remarks in a surprise appearance during a vacation day at an Idaho mountain resort. He said the views espoused by Cindy Sheehan -- mother of a slain soldier and the founder of an antiwar encampment close to the president’s ranch near Crawford, Texas -- did not represent the opinions of most of the military families he had met. The criticism marked a new line of argument from Bush, and coincided with an announcement that he would spend time today with National Guard families during a stop near Boise.

“There’s a lot of people protesting, and there’s a lot of points of view about the Iraq war,” said Bush, clad in jeans and a fleece jacket as he spoke with a small group of reporters at the resort, about 80 miles north of the state capital. “As you know, in Crawford last weekend there were people from both sides of the issue, or from all sides of the issue, there to express their opinions.”

At Ft. Lewis, Wash., in June 2004, Bush met briefly with Sheehan and other members of her family -- as he does regularly with families of fallen soldiers, including the meetings planned for today -- but she has demanded to see him face to face.

“I understand her anguish,” Bush said. “I met with a lot of families. She doesn’t represent the view of a lot of the families I have met with. And I’ll continue to meet with families.”

Bush’s comments come amid signs that the protest movement, backed by well-financed liberal organizations, is continuing to build its network and sharpen its message.

More than 1,000 opponents of the Iraq war rallied Monday in Salt Lake City, blocks from a convention center where Bush defended his policies to 15,000 members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. A much smaller rally was held Tuesday in Boise, where organizers set up about 1,800 small wooden crosses to represent dead U.S. troops and read each name aloud.

Among those at the Boise rally was Melanie House, 27, of Simi Valley. Her husband, John, a Navy corpsman, died along with 30 Marines in a January helicopter crash near Iraq’s border with Jordan. House said she had signed up through the liberal group MoveOn.org to host a vigil supporting Sheehan last week, and that group leaders recruited her to take a more prominent role in opposing the war.

Another liberal group, TrueMajority, founded by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company, paid for House to fly to Boise. Today, she is expected to arrive in Crawford with Sheehan, who left the protest site last week after her mother became ill in Los Angeles.

“I want to ask the president why my husband had to die and why I’m a widow at age 27,” said House, holding her 8-month-old son, James, who wore a T-shirt with the words “I’m proud of my daddy” and a photograph of his father in his dress uniform. “And I want to know why my son was fatherless at 4 weeks old.”

To coincide with the president’s visits to Salt Lake City and Boise this week, Gold Star Families for Peace, a group Sheehan co-founded, purchased television ads in those cities featuring Sheehan’s accusations that Bush lied about his reasons for invading Iraq.

Referring to Bush’s suggestion Tuesday that Sheehan did not reflect the views of many families who had lost relatives in Iraq and Afghanistan, another mother protesting in Crawford, Karen Meredith of Mountain View, Calif., said the president was “fooling himself” and that he had met with a small fraction of families of slain soldiers.

As an example, said Meredith, whose son, Army Lt. Ken Ballard, was killed in 2004, Bush had not met with her. “I’m in his backyard, so I’d love to come over and have a lemonade with him, because many families feel the same way that we do.”

On Monday, Bush told the veterans group that withdrawal from Iraq would result in isolationism. His more confrontational language Tuesday marked a renewed effort by White House officials to discredit arguments being made by protesters, who are calling on the president to avoid further bloodshed by pulling out of Iraq.

Bush said Tuesday that “immediate withdrawal” would be a mistake. He also sought to portray his Iraq critics as critics of the broader effort against terrorism, which remains more popular than the Iraq policy. Bush tried to paint protesters as opponents of engagement in the entire region, even though Sheehan and others have focused their criticisms primarily on Iraq. Bush’s remarks appeared to buttress Sheehan critics who have assailed the mother’s assertion in at least one interview this month that the invasion of Afghanistan to remove the Taliban after Sept. 11 was wrong.

“I think those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East would be -- are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States,” Bush said.

Bush’s words were amplified by one of his senior aides, Daniel Bartlett, who hit the morning network television circuit to push back against the antiwar movement.

“Those calling for immediate withdrawal -- we believe would be a disastrous mistake for national security in America,” Bartlett told Fox News. “We have a history -- Somalia, Beirut, Lebanon, those times when the going got tough [and] we retreated and withdrew from the scene -- it only emboldened the terrorists. We’re not going to do that here. We’re going to stay, fight and win.”

At a news briefing in Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said abandoning Iraq would mean a “return to darkness.” But he acknowledged the pain of the bereaved, saying, “It has to be a heart-wrenching thing for each of the families involved.”

Bush will address thousands of National Guard troops and their families today in Nampa, Idaho, and is expected again to discuss the war on terrorism. After his speech, he will meet privately with families of slain soldiers.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Tuesday that the families were not screened for their views on the war.

“There is an open invitation to families of the fallen to meet with the president,” Duffy said. “Some accept, some decline.”