http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060320/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_war_protests

Thousands Around Globe Call for End of War By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER, AP 

PORTLAND, Ore. - The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew 
tens of thousands of protesters around the globe, from Portland to 
hurricane-ravaged Louisiana to Australia, with chants of "Stop the War" and 
calls for the withdrawal of troops. 

A protest march in downtown Portland, with demonstrators carrying signs 
that said "Impeach the Evildoer," took nearly an hour to pass through the 
streets. Police estimated the turnout at about 10,000 and reported no 
arrests.

"It is time now for you to take back your country," said Steven DeFord at a 
pre-march rally. His son, Oregon National Guard Sgt. David Johnson, 37, was 
killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb in September 2004.

Many of the weekend demonstrations across the United States, Asia and 
Europe drew smaller-than-anticipated crowds — far short of the millions 
worldwide who protested the initial invasion in March 2003 and the first 
anniversary in 2004.

In Louisiana, 200 war veterans, hurricane survivors and others gathered 
Sunday at the Chalmette National Cemetery to protest how the military 
conflict overseas had hurt the country's ability to help the Gulf Coast 
recover from last year's hurricanes.

"We attacked a country who never did anything to us," said Philadelphia 
resident Al Zappala, whose 30-year-old son was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

He said his son joined the National Guard to help his community. "He was 
sent to Iraq based on lies," Zappala said.

About 200 joined a march Sunday down New York's Fifth Avenue, with signs 
including: "We the People Need to do More to End the War." Seventeen people 
were arrested for disorderly conduct, police said. Saturday's rally drew 
more than 1,000 people.

Anti-war rallies in Japan drew about 800 protesters chanting "No war! Stop 
the war!" and banging drums as they marched peacefully through downtown 
Tokyo toward the U.S. Embassy. A day earlier, about 2,000 rallied in the 
city.

"The Iraq war was President Bush's big mistake and the whole world is 
against him," said organizer Ayako Nishimura. "Iraq must decide its own 
affairs."

Protesters also gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia, and at least 
1,000 people turned out in Seoul, South Korea, which has the third-largest 
contingent of foreign troops in Iraq after the U.S. and Britain.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, a strident Bush critic, said world opinion 
is turning against the war as he offered some of his harshest criticisms of 
the U.S. president in months.

"The world is opposed to your war, Mr. Danger," Chavez said Sunday on his 
weekly television and radio program. He also called Bush a "coward," 
a "donkey" and a "drunkard."

Joining the marchers in Chalmette was former Florida National Guard Staff 
Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a conscientious objector from Miami Beach, Fla., who was 
court-martialed and jailed for desertion.

"I joined the military because it seemed to offer stability and 
camaraderie," he said. "No soldier signs up for a war for oil."

His fellow demonstrators had set out Tuesday on a 140-mile march from 
Mobile, Ala., to New Orleans to draw attention both to the war and to the 
federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

David Cline, president of Veterans For Peace, said the nation can't have 
both "guns and butter," a reference to President Lyndon Johnson's statement 
that the country could fight the war in Vietnam and enjoy the good life at 
home.

"The reality is you get either A or B, you don't get A and B," he said. 

President Bush marked the anniversary Sunday by touting the efforts to 
build democracy in Iraq. He avoided any mention of the continuing daily 
violence there and didn't utter the word "war." 

"We are implementing a strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq," Bush 
said in a brief statement to reporters outside the White House. 

Activist Cindy Sheehan, who energized the anti-war movement last summer 
with her monthlong protest outside Bush's Texas ranch, joined the Gulf 
Coast marchers in Mississippi on Friday, but left early Sunday for events 
in Washington. 

"Katrina only happened because of the incompetence and callousness of the 
(Bush) administration, just as we've seen in Iraq," Sheehan said Sunday. 

___ 





On Fri, 17 Mar 2006 11:24:31 EST, Wirt Atmar <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Approaching the third anniversary of the unprovoked invasion of Iraq,
>following 2300 American dead and 30,000 to 100,000 Iraqi dead, and record 
deficits in
>the American budget, it's time to repeat this posting from a month before 
the invasion:
>
>========================================
>
>Date:         Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:32:55 EST
>Reply-To:     [log in to unmask]
>Sender:       HP-3000 Systems Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
>From:         Wirt Atmar <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Re: OT: A powerful argument for war with Iraq
>Comments: To: [log in to unmask]
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
>Gary asks:
>
>> What I don't understand is how much more time we should give.  I keep
>> hearing that over and over and over and over.  The Persian Gulf War 
ended in
>> 1991.  Resolutions were passed for Iraq to disarm.  It's now 12 years 
later
>> and we're still arguing about more time.  If Iraq hasn't disarmed by now,
>> what makes anyone think he will actually do it at all?
>
>If disobeying or ignoring UN resolutions were to be considered reason 
enough
>for invasion, we should be attacking Israel instead of Iraq. Israel has
>steadfastly ignored UN resolutions passed 50 years ago demanding the
>Palestinians' right of return, as well as more recent UN resolutions
>demanding Israel return to the 1967 borders and evacuate the West Bank.
>
>If engaging in ethnic cleansing, the systematic suppression and humiliation
>of whole peoples, and the development of weapons of mass destruction were
>sufficient to be considered crimes, we should be attacking Israel instead 
of
>Iraq.
>
>Life is not nearly as simple as the current administration is making it 
seem.
>Perhaps more relevant, nothing Iraq has done lately has posed any threat to
>either the United States or any of Iraq's neighbors. Saddam is 65 years old
>now, he has no active WMD programs, and he governs an army that is only 30%
>to 50% the size it was during the 1991 invasion of Kuwait. The situation in
>Iraq will come to an end in another 10 years of its own accord. Containment
>as a policy worked for the Soviet Union, for Libya, and it would work for
>Iraq. The most pro-western Islamic country in the region is now Iran, and 
it
>became so on its own, primarily because we left it alone.
>
>Would Iraq be better off if it were liberated from Saddam? The most 
powerful
>answer to that question is the Baghdad Stock Index. The BSI has steadily
>risen since the first rumblings of a new US invasion; the business and 
middle
>classes of Iraq sees great hope resulting the coming war and the rises in 
the
>BSI reflect that -- in the only manner that public opinion can be expressed
>in Iraq.
>
>But will we and the world be better off if Saddam is toppled? Things never
>turn out as badly as the worst predictions suggest, nor do they ever turn 
out
>as well as the most optimistic proponents suggest. They always seem to 
take a
>middling, confused course, probably no better or worse than if a course of
>containment had been followed, but without the costs in lives or money 
that a
>war will require.
>
>Wirt Atmar
>
>=========================================
>
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