Baghdad ? About 10,000 Iraqis rallied outside ruling party headquarters Monday in a demonstration against U.S. military threats, burning effigies of President Bush and American flags.

Participants carried banners pledging their support for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whose overthrow is a U.S. policy goal. Speculation that war is imminent has been strong here in recent months.

Salim al-Qubiesi, a member of the Iraqi parliament, called on the world to get rid of Bush instead of Saddam, saying the U.S. president “represents a danger to human civilization because he is the No. 1 terrorist in the world.”

Demonstrators from women’s groups, unions, tribes and the ruling Baath Party marched from points throughout the city to party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, shouting “Iraq is not afraid of the U.S. threats.”

The United States, which led the 1991 Gulf War coalition that ousted Iraqi forces from Kuwait, accuses Iraq of trying to rebuild its banned chemical, nuclear and biological weapons programs and of supporting terrorism. Bush has threatened unspecified consequences if inspectors, who left the country ahead of U.S.-British strikes in December 1998, are not allowed to return.

The Bush administration was dismissive of a recent Iraqi offer to hold technical talks in Baghdad that could lead to the resumption of the U.N. weapons inspection in Iraq. Saying “nothing’s changed,” Bush vowed Saturday to all use all means at his disposal to change the regime in Baghdad.