Tens of thousands protest possible war with Iraq
Posted on 01/19/2003 3:42:45 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Tens of thousands protest possible war with Iraq
Rallies held Saturday in Washington, across U.S. and around the world
01/19/2003
WASHINGTON - They came by the tens of thousands Saturday, with the same message: No war against Iraq.
Some carried it on printed placards or brightly colored banners or scrawled by hand on pieces of old cardboard. Others shouted it or chanted it. Some sang.
They came from the Northeast, the South, the Midwest, the Southwest - from Maine and Kentucky and Michigan and Texas - all demanding that President Bush not go to war.
"Came all the way from Texas to take him back," said one of the signs carried by Mike Hassibi, an Austin real estate developer.
The president should "retire to his ranch, where he belongs," Mr. Hassibi said. "The policy is for them to take over the countries that have oil in that region. It is oil and control of the world."
Organizers of the rally and the 2-mile march from the Capitol to the Navy Yard, home to the Navy's top admiral, said the crowd had swelled to more than 200,000 - larger than the last major anti-war protest in the capital in October.
Rallies to continue
 Protesters carry caricatures of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld (left), President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney during a peace rally in Portland, Ore., on Saturday. (AP)
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"The Bush administration is on its way toward war," said ANSWER spokesman Brian Becker, adding that he hoped the rallies would convince Americans that an attack is "not a noble, just cause."
Saturday's anti-war rally in Washington and another in San Francisco were the anchors for dozens of smaller demonstrations throughout the country, including in Houston and Austin.
Worldwide, there were many others in major cities from London to Cairo to Tokyo. In Moscow, Russians marched outside the U.S. embassy, chanting "Yankee, go home."
In Washington, demonstrators gathered on the National Mall on the west side of the Capitol on a sunny-but-cold day, with temperatures rising only into the mid 20s. Many carried creative, if sometimes vulgar, signs denouncing Mr. Bush and saying the focus on Iraq is about oil, not weapons of mass destruction.
For more than three hours, the crowd milled patiently on the mall, listening to speeches from several dozen anti-war activists, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Ron Kovic, the paralyzed Vietnam War veteran whose autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July, was made into an Academy Award-winning movie starring Tom Cruise.
"Iraq is no threat to the U.S.," Mr. Jackson declared during an impromptu news conference, dismissing Mr. Bush's war talk as "bellicose rhetoric that gives big headlines."
Mr. Bush was out of town, spending the weekend as he often does at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. But before he left, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, the president welcomed the free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution.
"We are a democracy, and people in the United States, unlike Iraq, are free to protest and to make their case known," Mr. Fleischer said. "That's a time-honored part of American tradition, and the president fully understands it. It's a strength of our democracy."
Bill Maxwell, a construction manager who made the 25-hour bus trip up from Dallas with other members of the Dallas Peace Center, said he didn't really expect the Bush administration to listen to Saturday's demonstrators.
But, he said, "We want people to stand up and speak."
All ages present
 Washington Metropolitan police officers stand guard as pro-war demonstrators protest in the background Saturday. (AP)
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"If I'm not here today, then I'm complicit in murder," said Matt Gatto, a 24-year-old college student from Albany, N.Y.
"It's OK to pursue people who did the terrorist attacks against us, as we would criminals, like a murderer," he said. "But we don't drop a bomb on a murderer's house. We go and we catch the murderer, and we put him in jail. That's OK, but aerial bombing with F-16s - I just don't think it's right."
Other demonstrators raised similar questions about the president's war on terrorism, which he is now contemplating extending to Iraq. Saddam Hussein is harboring chemical and biological weapons and is determined to develop a nuclear bomb, Mr. Bush says, and must be disarmed, through war if necessary.
"We are headed toward war, and we don't need it," said Pat Buck, who at age 78 has become actively opposed to war.
"This is about the only thing I can do to show how I feel about the whole shape of the country today," she said after exiting one of 11 buses from Maine.
On the long weekend that marks the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., Ms. Buck recalled that at the beginning of the Vietnam War, the slain civil-rights leader had argued that "war is wrong because they are taking all the blacks into the service."
She recalled thinking, "Who does Martin Luther King think he is?
"So, I've come a long way," she said.
Carlos Marentes, who runs the Farm Workers Center in El Paso, said he is also concerned about the likelihood that a disproportional number of wartime casualties will be among minorities, as well as the money a war would drain from urgent domestic programs.
"In a war, we are the ones paying," he said. "There are more serious problems that this administration should be taking care of, especially the poverty that affects our communities."
Perrie Spaulding-Allen of Louisville, Ky., worries about those problems, too, and more.
"I don't want to see innocent people dying," she said. "I don't really see any reason for why there should be war."
Her brother-in-law, William Caswell, a civilian physicist who worked for the Navy, was a passenger on the hijacked American Airlines jet that was rammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. But she doesn't believe a war with Iraq has "anything to do with 9-11."
She said she agrees with Mr. Maxwell that the anti-war protests won't matter to Mr. Bush.
"He's going to do what he wants to do anyway," she said. "But it matters to me. It makes me feel like I'm doing something."
E-mail bhillman@dallasnews.com
...they impeached bill clinton 4 years ago for nothing. Are we gonna stand by and not impeach Bush?...who wants to impeach BUSH??!!
And the protestors were chanting:
No more blood for oil !! No more blood for oil !!...
I didn't watch much of it, but I saw more than I liked. What fools, imho...
I just love this. President Bush is a 'big picture' kind of guy!:
Mr. Bush was out of town, spending the weekend as he often does at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. But before he left, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, the president welcomed the free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution.
"We are a democracy, and people in the United States, unlike Iraq, are free to protest and to make their case known," Mr. Fleischer said. "That's a time-honored part of American tradition, and the president fully understands it. It's a strength of our democracy."
President Bush at the wheel !
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my President Bush ping list!. . .don't be shy. 
These are the yellow cowards who would, after Saddam manufactured poison gas is released in Manhattan killing 100,000 people, be first in line complaining that "they" didn't do enough to protect America.But of course. The 'what did Bush know, and when did he know it' crowd would quickly emerge.
Hey, did you see this, btw?:
UN seizes Iraqi atom bomb papers
UNITED NATIONS weapons inspectors in Iraq revealed last night that they had discovered 3,000 documents linked to nuclear arms technology while searching a scientist's house.
The documents were recovered from the home of Faleh Hassan, an Iraqi physicist and director of a military installation west of Baghdad. Mohamed El Baradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Hassan's papers related to a laser technique for enriching uranium, a component of nuclear weapons.
< snip >
This weekend American intelligence officers were investigating a report that a senior official in Iraq's ministry of industry and military industrialisation, which oversees weapons production, had been killed. He had been trying to flee the country for Jordan with his wife and two children a week ago, but had been stopped.
"He was trying to leave with information, but the Mukhabarat [intelligence service] are watching him and all people like him," said an Iraqi source opposed to the regime. "They brought him back to Baghdad. We think he [was] executed." There has been no confirmation of the claim.
Airheads and pinheads: "it's all about oil"...
If she ever tried to think maybe she would realize that funny taste in her mouth comes from pleasuring a murderering Iraqi dictator.
While I support even these verminous group's right to protest, I wonder what they'll carp on when Saddam, Kim Jong Yong ( or whatever NK's Fearless Leeder calls himself these days... ) or any of a number of evil characters sails a nuke into San Francisco harbor and detonates it?
Probably "Boosh didn't do enough!"
However, I am a bit leery of the war idea, because I'm afraid it will create more problems than it will solve. I hope I am wrong.
What a joke. When 100,000 people pack the Vet today to see Tampa WAR with the Eagles, will the headlines read, They came by the thousands to see violence and war..... The loons were out in force, Queers for Peace, Lesbians Against War, and I thought I saw Pedophiles for Peace. :}
If she ever tried to think maybe she would realize that funny taste in her mouth comes from pleasuring a murderering Iraqi dictator.Here is an article that says it's because they don't use the part of the brain that performs rational thought, lol !:
| The Triune Brain |
The Triune Brain
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#12: Last time I checked, it looked like the Iraqis themselves are financing it.
Interesting, either way. Ya'll have a link to that info, btw?...
Thanks.
No more blood for oil ! No more blood for oil !...
it made my blood boil.
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