Bush: Stand for your liberty and we will stand with you!

&to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2002/09/11/36335.html ' target=_blank>George W. Bush was officially sworn in to begin his second term as president of the United States Thursday, promising to pursue "the expansion of freedom in all the world."

About 250,000 people endured temperatures that hovered just below the freezing point to watch 58-year-old president reaffirm his oath of office outside the Capitol building.

He did so just before noon, his hand on a family Bible as his wife Laura and daughters Jenna and Barbara looked on. Chief Justice of the &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/usa/2001/07/09/9609.html ' target=_blank>Supreme Court William Rehnquist presided, though the 80-year-old jurist has been recovering from thyroid cancer over the past several weeks, says CBC News.

"All who live in &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2003/03/20/44727.html ' target=_blank>tyranny and hopelessness can know [that] the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors," Bush told a vast crowd at the Capitol, in Washington. "When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

Ignoring worries that deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and other spots are stretching U.S. forces to the limit, Mr. Bush spelled out the aggressive foreign goal of holding dictators to account.

"It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," he said.

"... America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies", wrote the Globe and Mail.