Denouncing a conflict entering its fifth year, protesters across the country raised their voices on Saturday against US policy in Iraq and marched by the thousands to the Pentagon in the footsteps of an epic demonstration four decades ago against another divisive war.
A counterprotest was staged, too, on a day of dueling signs and sentiments such as "Illegal Combat" and "Peace Through Strength," and songs like The Battle Hymn of the Republic and War (What's It Good For?).
Thousands crossed the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial to rally loudly but peacefully near the Pentagon.
PHOTO: AFP
"We're here in the shadow of the war machine," said anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. "It's like being in the shadow of the Death Star. They take their death and destruction and they export it around the world. We need to shut it down."
Smaller protests were held in other US cities, stretching to tomorrow's four-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion. In Los Angeles, Vietnam veteran Ed Ellis, 59, hoped the demonstrations would be the "tipping point" against a war that has killed more than 3,200 US troops and engulfed Iraq in a deadly cycle of violence.
"It's all moving in our direction, it's happening," he predicted at the Hollywood rally. "The administration, their get-out-of-jail-free card, they don't get one anymore."
Overseas, tens of thousands marched in Madrid as Spaniards called not only for the US to get out of Iraq but to close the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. More than 3,000 people protested peacefully in Istanbul, Turkey, and about 1,000 in Athens, Greece.
Speakers at the Pentagon rally criticized the Bush administration at every turn but blamed congressional Democrats, too, for refusing to cut off money for the war.
"This is a bipartisan war," New York City labor activist Michael Letwin told the crowd. "The Democratic Party cannot be trusted to end it."
Five people were arrested after the demonstration when they walked onto a bridge that had been closed off to accommodate the protest and then refused orders to leave so police could reopen it to traffic, Pentagon police spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said. They were cited and released, she said.
Blair Jones, a spokesman for US President George W. Bush, said of the protests: "Our Constitution guarantees the right to peacefully express one's views."
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