More American troops prepared last night to join the tens of thousands already massed in the Gulf as US President George W. Bush told cheering soldiers a war against Iraq would be one of liberation, not conquest.
A state-run Iraqi paper called Mr Bush "the master of evil-doers". Thousands took to the streets in Pakistan and hundreds joined a march in the pro-Western Gulf state of Bahrain to protest against the threatened US attack and what one banner called the "Holocaust of the Muslims".
Mr Bush addressed thousands of cheering soldiers at the biggest army base in the United States, Fort Hood in his home state of Texas, describing how he viewed a possible war against President Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
" Should Saddam seal his fate by refusing to disarm, by ignoring the opinion of the world, you'll be fighting not to conquer anybody but to liberate people," he told them.
The Pentagon has ordered some units of the US 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Camp Pendleton, California, to go to the Gulf, defence officials said.
In a New Year surge of military preparation, the US military has announced the deployment of more than 11,000 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division based in the state of Georgia, as well as hundreds of engineers and intelligence specialists from Germany.
Nearly 60,000 U.S. military personnel are already in the Gulf and that number could double in coming weeks.
Britain is to send more than 20,000 troops to the Gulf and mobilise 7,000 reservists next week in preparation for war, the Daily Telegraphnewspaper said today.
It said defence chiefs will brief Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair on his return from holiday about plans for a mass deployment led by the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. Mr Blair is then expected to announce the deployment in a statement to parliament. Meanwhile UN inspectors continued their investigations of suspect sites in Iraq with no word yet of a "smoking gun" that might prove the country has weapons of mass destruction or is developing them.
A UN spokesman in Baghdad said one inspection was of a depot 200 km (120 miles) west of Baghdad which was used as a chemical weapons store before the 1991 Gulf War.