As thousands of demonstrators protested against the Iraq war outside the Capitol yesterday, top Congressional Republicans have warned President George Bush that his controversial troop increase has a few months at the very most to show results. The threat that his own party will turn against him is the clearest sign yet of the intensifying pressure on Mr Bush after the cool reaction to his State of the Union plea to lawmakers to "give a chance" to his plan to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and al-Anbar province, seat of the Sunni insurgency.
But the public overwhelmingly opposes the plan, by a majority of two to one, while the Iraq débâcle has driven down Mr Bush's approval rating to barely 30 per cent, a level rarely reached since Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate.
The "bring the troops home" rally, held in brilliant sunshine on the Washington Mall, was intended to highlight not only the 3,100 US troops who have died, but also the countless thousands of Iraqi civilian dead.
On the lawn where protesters gathered, stood a giant transparent bin filled with shoes, each tagged with the name of an Iraqi and details of how he or she died. Mr Bush's troop surge plan was "nonsense," said Scott Smith, a demonstrator with a son serving in Iraq; it was up to Congress to block it.
Among scheduled speakers yesterday was Jane Fonda, who led public protest against the Vietnam war four decades ago, and Hollywood stars Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon, and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. The only 2008 presidential candidate present was Ohio's Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who campaigned on an anti- war platform in 2004.