On October 2 several hundred (perhaps a couple thousand in attendence by the end) people marched from Arlington National Cemetery to The Ellipse, south of the White House. They carried many of the hundreds of cardboard coffins (the rest laid out on The Ellipse by volunteers ahead of the march) from the cemetery, across the Memorial Bridge, past the Lincoln memorial and down Constitution Avenue.

The coffins represent the American military deaths, in excess of 1,000 (cryptome.org/mil-dead-iqw, includes 56 afghan casualties, but Iraq sum still well exceed 1k and climbs ) in the Iraq war alone; without including Afghanistan, mercenaries, contractors, and those unaffiliated with the occupation but killed in war-zones with American involvement. The minority of flag-draped coffins represents the proportion of American military dead to all the other losses -- Iraqi, non-military, other military, etc, in Iraq.

A series of photos in the media gallery relating to this article can be found here.

See also: peacepledge.org/resist | www.mfso.org/

The event was coordinated by several groups including the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, Peace Now, Catholic Worker groups, Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans for Peace. The speakers included Gordon Clark (the originator of the Iraq Pledge), Phyllis Bennis (of the Institute for Policy Studies), and Arun Ghandi, the grandson of Mahatma Ghandi.

Participants included more than just contrarians to the Bush administration's foreign policy facilitated by a complicit congress or "mere" objectors to the concept of war. Military families and veterans were key participants. Among those bearing the symbolic coffins were veterans of the war still being waged.

They called for a quick withdrawal from Iraq, an end to what 90% of Iraqis, said Bennis, considered an occupation. They compared the U.S. presence in Iraq to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and noted that since the war Iraqis have had less security and hae both been threatened more on a daily basis by the chaos as well as more reasons to rise up against the foreign forces in their country.

In addition to objecting to how the U.S. military was being used, and the danger many of their loved one were in, their messages criticized the methods by which the U.S. is "bringing democracy" to Iraq, as well as the falsehoods that were presented to justify the war (Weapons of Mass Destruction, "Imminent Threat", all things discounted by both intelligence reports and publicly available fact before the invasion, and cited after the invasion by many an "enlightened" politician), and the apparent hypocrisy regarding publicly stated principles of "liberation" that might be the foundation for a "just war" anywhere.

Reportedly,28 were arrested at the White House for committing civil disobedience.

George Bush was not home.

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