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 News from Around the Americas | October 2005 
Protesters Mark 2,000th U.S. Fatality in Iraq
 Alan Elsner - Reuters
| | Kelly Hamlett of Oakland, California, and members and supporters of Veterans for Peace, place candles around Oakland's Lake Merritt in honor of the 2,000 American military casualties in Iraq. (Photo: Ray Chavez / AP) |
Protesters across the United States took part in hundreds of vigils and rallies on Wednesday to mark the 2,000th U.S. military death in Iraq, hoping to increase pressure on George W. Bush to start bringing troops home.
Anti-war activists said their movement was rapidly growing in strength and now spoke for a majority of Americans who now thought Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was a mistake.
"We're seeing rapid changes in public opinion in favor of ending the war and bringing back the troops and it's beginning to be reflected in Congress," said Phyllis Bennis of the anti-war Institute for Policy Studies.
"The anti-war position is no longer held exclusively for activists. It is beginning to give voice to the majority in this country," she said.
The death on Saturday of a soldier wounded in combat in Samarra, Iraq, on October 17 pushed the toll to 2,000. More than 15,000 U.S. troops have also been wounded in combat in the war that began March 2003.
The anti-war MoveOn.org said it was organizing more than a thousand vigils involving tens of thousands of people across the country and it appealed to supporters to donate $150,000 to air an anti-war TV ad.
Its Web site listed 23 events in the Los Angeles area alone, mostly small groups of people gathering for candlelight vigils in parks, public places, in people's homes or on street corners, to read poetry, sing songs and observe a moment of silence to remember the fallen.
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry, who lost to Bush in last year's presidential election, called for 20,000 troops to be brought home over the Christmas holidays.
On the Republican side, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel said the Iraq situation was a mess and the country needed a new strategy. "The longer the United States stays ...the more we will be seen as oppressors and occupiers and the more we will attract terrorists as we are now," he said.
Unpopularity Of War
Polls show the war has become steadily more unpopular over the past year. In an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey earlier this month, 34 percent favored maintaining current troop levels in Iraq while 58 percent wanted them reduced.
A CNN/USA Today poll published on Wednesday found 57 percent of Americans saying that the war was going badly.
Cindy Sheehan, the military mother who made her soldier son's death a symbol of the anti-war movement, led a group of protesters to visit military graves at Arlington National Cemetery.
Her vigil outside Bush's Texas ranch during the summer re-energized the anti-war movement but it has remained loosely organized.
Later, Sheehan planned to lead a rally outside the White House. Her son, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed on April 4, 2004.
Protesters noted that it took 18 months to reach 1,000 U.S. dead in Iraq, but just 14 additional months to reach 2,000.
"There's not only growing opposition to the war but also growing resolve on our part to increase the level of activism against it," said former Maine congressman Tom Andrews of Win Without War, a coalition of anti-war organizations.
In Lihue, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, an organizer invited activists to a prayer vigil on the lawn of the old county building: "Bring prayers and songs to share."
In Houston, a weeklong observance to honor those killed in Iraq, including U.S. military and Iraqi casualties, was to begin October 29 at the memorial to the Second World War. |
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