US: Dressed in a green army fatigue jacket, an emotional US President George Bush rallied US troops at the biggest American army base yesterday, telling them that a war against Iraq would be one of liberation, not conquest.
Some 4,000 soldiers in black berets assembled at Fort Hood in Texas responded with a deafening roar of approval when Mr Bush said "the finest military in the world" was "ready and prepared should we be forced to act".
In a day of rising international tension over Iraq, thousands of protesters in Pakistan demonstrated against any attack on Baghdad, with a crowd in Multan calling for the "destruction" of Mr Bush.
Hundreds more demonstrators joined a march in the pro-Western Gulf state of Bahrain to protest against what one banner called the coming "Holocaust of the Muslims" in Iraq.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, accused Washington of "an imperialist design" to invade Iraq regardless of the verdict of UN weapons inspectors. The state-run newspaper Al-Iraq accused the "evil-doer" Mr Bush of talking about a peaceful solution merely to defuse global public anger.
Iraqi officials also complained about a new aggressiveness by the inspectors as they searched suspected weapons sites. Gen Hussam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison to the UN team, complained about inspectors arriving at a site in a provocative way that offended Iraqi dignity.
A team of up to 100 inspectors has failed to find any concrete evidence of forbidden weapons programmes in five weeks of searches of 230 sites.
However, the UN's chief weapons inspector, Dr Hans Blix, who will report the inspectors' findings on January 27th, said at the UN in New York yesterday that they would include the results of laboratory tests of samples taken in Iraq.
Many analysts see January 27th as the critical moment in the gathering crisis, with Mr Bush on the following day explaining to Americans his final decision in his State of the Union address to Congress.
While emphasising that war is still a last resort, President Bush has stepped up the mobilisation of American troops for full-scale combat in the new year.
Yesterday the Pentagon ordered units of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Camp Pendleton, California, along with 11,000 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division in the state of Georgia and hundreds of engineers and intelligence specialists in Germany, to join 60,000 US military personnel already in the Gulf.
In his speech at Fort Hood, Mr Bush laid out a case for attacking Iraq no matter what the inspectors reported.
If war came, "you'll be fighting not to conquer anybody but to liberate people," he said. The Iraqi regime was a "great threat" to the US because of its proclaimed hatred of America and all it stood for, because of its record of torture and "reckless aggression" and because of its failure "to account for stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction".
President Saddam failed to account for these weapons and it was now certain that he held the UN in contempt, Mr Bush claimed.
"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 said.
"Some crucial hours may lie ahead," said Mr Bush, his voice choking up. "I know that every order I give can bring a cost.
"I also know without a doubt that every order I give will be carried out with skill and unselfish courage. We know the challenges and the dangers we face. Yet this generation of Americans is ready. We accept the burden of leadership. We act in the cause of peace and freedom and in that cause we will prevail."
Mr Bush's speech was punctuated by the military shout of "hoo-ah", especially when he said the US would take the fight against the terrorists to the enemy. "If they listen carefully they will hear behind them the mighty footsteps of the United States of America," said Mr Bush.