Thousands carry flag-draped coffins, ‘Indict Bush’ signs in DC protest on Iraq war anniversary

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Thousands rally on anniversary of invasion of Iraq

WASHINGTON — Thousands of protesters carried signs reading “Indict Bush Now” and flag-draped cardboard coffins on Saturday, urging President Barack Obama to withdraw troops from Iraq on the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion.

Protesters gathered for a rally at Lafayette Park across from the White House and planned to march through downtown. Stops on the route include military contractor Halliburton, the Mortgage Bankers Association and The Washington Post offices.

The protest, organized by military veterans and activists Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan, was expected to draw smaller crowds than the tens of thousands who marched in 2006 and 2007. But organizers say momentum is building because people are disenchanted with Obama’s decision to send more troops into Afghanistan.

At the rally, Sheehan asked whether “the honeymoon was over with that war criminal in the White House” — an apparent reference to Obama — prompting moderate applause. Sheehan also encouraged protesters to join a tent camp near the Washington Monument, saying they need to do more than shake their fists at empty buildings.

San Francisco’s rally brought out Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War and is the subject of the recent documentary film, “The Most Dangerous Man in America.” He likened the protest and others like it around the country Saturday to a day of demonstrations organized against the conflict in Vietnam in 1969.

“They thought it had no effect,” he told the crowd in San Francisco, referring to the 1969 protesters. “They were wrong.”

Ellsberg said President Richard Nixon was planning to escalate the war around that time, but held off.

Protesters in Washington stopped at the offices of military contractor Halliburton — where they tore apart an effigy of former Vice President and Halliburton Chief Executive Dick Cheney — the Mortgage Bankers Association and The Washington Post offices.

Anna Berlinrut, of South Orange, N.J., was one of a number of protesters who have children who have served in Iraq, and said her son supports her protests.

“If there were a draft, we’d have a million people out here,” Berlinrut said when asked about the turnout. The exact number of protesters was unclear, as D.C. authorities do not give out crowd estimates. Organizers estimated the march, which stretched for several blocks, at 10,000.

Despite the arrests, the protest was peaceful. At the outset, police closed a portion of the sidewalk in front of the White House fence after protesters tried to use mud and large stencils to spell out “Iraq veterans against the war.”

Once the sidewalk was closed, the protesters stenciled the message on the street using mud they had carried in buckets to the rally.

In New York City, there were far fewer protesters at a similar rally. A few dozen enthusiastic protesters gathered near a military recruiting station in Times Square, though they were far outnumbered by uninterested tourists.

A group of older women calling themselves the Raging Grannies sang, “The country is broke, this war is a joke.” Four demonstrators evoked images of the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by dressing in orange uniforms and wearing black hoods.

Liz Proefriedt, a retired Roman Catholic nun, held up a banner that read, “Bread not bombs.”

“It’s sad that a lot of people did not come out for this protest,” said Kathy Hoang, of Manchester, Conn. “People are getting used to the war, and don’t bother even to think about it anymore.”

In Los Angeles, hundreds chanted anti-war slogans and carried mock tombstones, and several hundred gathered in San Francisco. The Los Angeles march, which was under a mile, was to culminate with a rally in front of the famed Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

“We want to see the troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Corazon Esguerra with Act Now to Stop War and Racism or ANSWER, which organized the protest. “We want all the troops wherever they are to come back.”

Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik from New York, Noaki Schwartz from Los Angeles and Sudhin Thanawala of San Francisco contributed to this report.