War Opponents Protest From Boston to Tokyo

The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters in at least two dozen cities around the globe with many chanting "Stop the War" and calling for the withdrawal of troops. More than 7,000 people marched through downtown Chicago on Saturday in one of the nation's largest protests, saying the war diverts money from domestic needs and demanding the U.S. pull out of Iraq. One sign read, "Bush is a category 5 disaster."

"I'm against this war, I'm against the torture," said protester Martha Conrad, 54. "We're doing this for the people of Iraq." Many of the weekend demonstrations in Australia, Asia and Europe drew smaller-than-anticipated crowds. In London, police said 15,000 people joined a march Saturday from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square. The anniversary last year attracted 45,000 protesters in the city.

In Japan, anti-war rallies stretched into a second day Sunday, with 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."

Elsewhere Sunday, anti-war protesters demonstrated 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. In London, Rose Gentle, whose soldier son Gordon, 19, was killed by a roadside bomb last year in Basra, southern Iraq, said British Prime Minister Tony Blairhas made Iraq a worse place for the Iraqi people. "Every day you hear of new deaths," she said. Britain, the United States' strongest supporter in the Iraq war, has about 8,000 soldiers in Iraq but plans to pull out 800 of them by May.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060319/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_war_protests

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