Protests mark war milestone

NEW ORLEANS – Veterans and war protesters marched past gutted houses and piles of rotting wood and debris Sunday, saying the slow pace of rebuilding this hurricane-ravaged city shows the price the country is paying for continuing to wage war in Iraq.

“A lot of people don’t have a grasp of what this war is costing us,” Vern Hall, a Vietnam War veteran from Minnesota, said as he walked by shuttered buildings with broken glass and precariously hanging metal.

“Here’s the actual cost of this,” he said, looking around. “Things are not getting done.”

The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters to cities around the globe for a second day Sunday, with chants of “Stop the war” and calls for the withdrawal of troops.

In Portland, a rally and march drew an estimated 10,000 people by police estimates.

It took the parade, with marchers eight to 10 abreast, nearly an hour to pass.

“A year from now, which one of you will be a Gold Star family member?” asked Steven DeFord at a pre-march rally. His son, Oregon National Guard Sgt. David Johnson, 37, was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb in September 2004.

“If 64 percent of the United States thinks this invasion is wrong, where are they?” he said. “What if I had done more? I live with that thought every day.”

Attendance at the demonstrations worldwide was lower than organizers had predicted and far short of the millions who protested the initial invasion in March 2003 and the first anniversary in 2004.

Rallies in Japan drew about 800 people, chanting “No war! Stop the war!” Protesters also gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia, and at least 1,000 people turned out in Seoul, South Korea.