'Iraq will be your Vietnam'

2003-09-29 08:03

Los Angeles - Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Hollywood on Sunday chanting slogans and holding signs as part of a world-wide protest against the occupation of Iraq.

Similar rallies were held in Boston and San Francisco, and followed international protests on Saturday in London, Athens, Paris and other cities.

The Los Angeles protest drew an estimated three thousand people. No arrests or injuries were reported.

"George Bush, Uncle Sam, Iraq will be your Vietnam," demonstrators chanted while walking down Sunset Boulevard. The peaceful march and rally drew a wide group from war veterans to parents with children in strollers. Some demonstrators carried signs saying, "Lying Son of a Bush," "Recall Bush" and "Iraq Equals Quagmire".

"We are supposed to be a democratic, free nation and I want to express my feelings against this criminal administration," said Pilar Happori, 58, of Garden Grove. "This is a dangerous administration for destroying not only the US, but the world."

In Boston, an estimated 150 protesters demonstrating against the government's Iraq policy, the Palestinian cause and other issues waved rainbow flags and chanted as they marched behind a pickup truck from the city's Copley Square to the Park Plaza Hotel. No arrests were reported.

At a rally following the march in Los Angeles, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said that US troops should be pulled out of Iraq and replaced by international forces.

"We need to get the UN in and the US out," Kucinich said. "There can be a way to extricate this nation from the quicksand of Iraq."

Disabled Vietnam veteran Ron Kobic, author of Born on the Fourth of July, addressed the rally, saying "the same government that paralysed me and put me in this wheelchair" was killing American and Iraqi boys.

Fernando Suarez del Solar of Escondido, whose 20-year-old son died in March while fighting in Iraq, led the crowd in chants of "Bring them home now!"

Soldier for peace, not oil

"My son was a peace lover. He was a soldier for peace, not for oil," said Suarez, holding a picture of his son in his Marine uniform.

Code Pink, a women's pro-peace group, unveiled a 40-foot-long "pink slip" during the rally that read, "Rumsfeld, you're dishonourably discharged."

The protest was the first major demonstration in Los Angeles since Saddam Hussein's regime was ousted. Demonstrators also included the Palestinian cause at the rally. Several coffins were rolled through the streets by supporters of the free Palestine movement.

- AP