"Today we stand proudly with a majority of Americans who want - actually who demand - we bring our troops home now," Tom Goldsmith, minister at the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, told a crowd of about 600 protesters gathered at the City-County Building.

Police had expected as many as 5,000 demonstrators.

Recent polls show a majority of Americans support a withdrawal of troops within a year. And pessimism about the Iraq mission appears to have extended even into conservative Utah, where in a January poll sponsored by The Salt Lake Tribune, just 41 percent of respondents said they support President Bush's handling of the Iraq war. That's a considerable drop from past Tribune polls that consistently marked majority support for the president's war management.

Goldsmith and other speakers credited hard-core anti-war activists with stoking the embers of dissent which have led to a new political climate. "Your views and activities over the past four years have finally revealed the lies that led us to war," he said.

More than 3,200 U.S. service members - including Utah soldier Brandon Parr, who was being remembered at a downtown Salt Lake City church even as protesters were assembling down the road - have died in Iraq. The Tribune has counted 35 Utahns and former Utahns who have been killed.