Bush: ‘We will win’ war on terrorism 

Bush says Sheehan not representative
But he said, “She doesn’t represent the view of a lot of the families I have met with.”

Bush met Sheehan last year during a similar meetings with other families of the war dead. But she says developments since then make another meeting necessary.

Her vigil outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, has fueled the anti-war movement. Even some of the president’s fellow Republicans have called for an end to U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Sheehan flew to Los Angeles last week after her 74-year-old mother had a stroke, but was expected to return to Texas to resume her vigil before Bush ends his five-week vacation and returns to the White House at the beginning of September.

In his remarks Tuesday, Bush said U.S. troops in Iraq are keeping the country safe by taking the fight to the terrorists and that Iraqi progress toward establishing democracy would help too.

After the president spoke, more than 100 anti-war protesters gathered at a park across from the Idaho Statehouse to read the names of the more than 1,800 U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq and to erect hundreds of tiny crosses in their memory.

Laura McCarthy of Eagle, Idaho, whose son, Gavin, 21, is in Iraq with the Idaho Army National Guard’s 116^th brigade, said Bush “probably breathed a sigh of relief” when he got to Idaho, a state he won easily in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

“Guess what?” McCarthy said. “He’s going to find a Cindy Sheehan in every community across the U.S.”

The visit by the president and first lady Laura Bush to the mountain getaway was sandwiched between two speeches to rally support for the war. Bush spoke Monday in Salt Lake City at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

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