From Reuters News
By Gideon Long and Sue Pleming

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accepted on Friday the United States had probably made thousands of errors in Iraq but defended the overall strategy of removing Saddam Hussein. Local Muslims and anti-war activists told Rice to “Go Home” when British counterpart Jack Straw earlier led her on a tour of his home town of Blackburn in the industrial northwest, an area which rarely plays host to overseas politicians.

“Yes, I know we have made tactical errors, thousands of them,” she said in answer to a question over whether lessons had been learned since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. “I believe strongly that it was the right strategic decision, that Saddam had been a threat to the international community long enough,” she added.

Earlier, about 250 protesters gathered outside a school which Rice visited, waving placards urging her to go home and shouting as her motorcade arrived. Many of them were locals from Straw’s constituency of Blackburn, a former cotton town with a 20 percent Muslim population. Straw invited Rice to the area after he toured her home state of Alabama last year.

Protesters had already persuaded a mosque in the town to withdraw its invitation to her. “The Muslim population is very angry. She’s not welcome in Blackburn,” said Suliman, one of the demonstrators outside Pleckgate school, where Rice met young pupils. “How many lives per gallon?” asked one of the placards held aloft, in reference to the U.S. invasion of oil-rich Iraq which many Britons opposed.

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