War Protesters Are Kept From the Pentagon
WASHINGTON — Marchers protesting the Iraq war tried to deliver a mock coffin to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Monday, but police kept them off Pentagon grounds during a demonstration marking the war’s third anniversary.
A muffled drum and a ceremonial peace bell sounded along a route followed by about 200 protesters from the Lincoln Memorial to Defense Department headquarters.
“No Iraqi is our enemy,” said Steve Cleghorn, 56, of Reynoldsville, Pa., of the group Military Families Speak Out.
Organizers worked with U.S. Park Police to select the demonstration route along a channel park just east of the Pentagon, where police set up a 5-foot-high steel barrier.
Demonstrators chanted “Peace now” as more than two dozen protesters crossed the fence in an orchestrated act of civil disobedience and were immediately taken into custody.
The coffin, draped in black bunting and bearing photographs from the war, “represents the massive casualties we’re seeing in the war in Iraq,” said Gordon Clark, 45, of the group Iraq Pledge of Resistance.
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