Protesters hold vigil on eve of Bush speech

BOISE – As the names of the nearly 1,900 American soldiers who have died in Iraq were read over a microphone, Melanie House hushed her 8-month-old son.

“Nothing is going to justify my husband’s death,” said House, whose husband, U.S. Navy medic John Daniel House, was killed in a January helicopter crash. “Why are we there? What is President Bush trying to get out of this? Why must my son be fatherless?”

House was among more than 100 protesters who gathered at a park across from the Idaho Statehouse on Tuesday, on the eve of President Bush’s speech in nearby Nampa.

The protesters want the soldiers to come home from Iraq. Bush’s address is expected to focus on why the administration wants them to stay.

House, 27, traveled here from her home in Simi Valley, Calif., after learning that Bush would be in Idaho. She said she thought the proximity might enable the president to better hear her message.

During his Iraq tour, House said her husband often called home to confide that he didn’t know why the troops were there.

“He had decided that he wouldn’t re-enlist,” House said. “After deployment, he was going to get out of the Navy.”

Now she wants the president to answer the questions raised by her late husband.

Another protester, Laura McCarthy of Eagle, said she doubts Bush will acknowledge the gathering. Still, she said she believes it’s important to let the president know that even in heavily Republican Idaho, there is opposition to the war.

She called on others in the state to follow the example of Cindy Sheehan, the California mom who camped out near Bush’s Texas ranch for weeks to protest the war and the death of her son in Iraq.

“President Bush probably breathed a sigh of relief when he touched down in Idaho,” McCarthy told the crowd, surrounded by hundreds of tiny crosses symbolizing the troops killed in Iraq. “Guess what? He’s going to find a Cindy Sheehan in every community across the U.S.”

McCarthy’s son, 21-year-old Gavin McCarthy, is serving in Iraq with the Idaho National Guard’s 116th brigade, she said.

“Idahoans want the troops brought home,” said organizer Liz Paul of the Idaho Peace Coalition. “This is definitely a message to the president that there’s no place in America that people aren’t against the war.”

At least three Boise broadcasters have agreed to air a controversial advertisement from the group Gold Star Families for Peace in which Sheehan accuses Bush of lying to the American people about the war in Iraq.

ABC affiliate KIVI-TV aired the 60-second ad on Tuesday, during daytime hours but not during the newscast, said general manager Bob Rosenthal. NBC affiliate KTVB-TV and FOX affiliate KTRV-TV said they also would run the ad during the day but not during newscasts.

The ad was expected to run both Tuesday and Wednesday, at a cost of less than $10,000 for the three stations.

Jeff Anderson, general manager for CBS affiliate KBCI-TV, said his station believes the advertisement to be factually inaccurate and so refused to run the spot. He declined to elaborate.