The Bush/Cheney 2004 Victory Tour Gets Off to Rousing Start Half-a-Million Italians, or as the Preznit calls them "Eye-Tal-yan Evildoers" sent a hearty greeting to our Chimperor today.

Protesters swarmed the streets of central Rome after Bush met with Pope John Paul II, one of the strongest critics of the war. Police estimated the number of demonstrators at 500,000. Authorities deployed 10,000 police in strategic sites in anticipation of violence. The crowd was boisterous but relatively peaceful. The protests took place at the Piazza Venezia, the site of Italy's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Bush had been scheduled to lay a wreath at the tomb, but those plans had to be scrapped for security reasons.