"More than 1,000 in Seattle protest war"

Seattle P-I:

Shouting "U.S. off of Iraqi soil," more than 1,000 anti-war demonstrators marched Saturday afternoon from the Center for Social Justice on Capitol Hill to the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center off Yesler Way. The march was timed to coincide with a demonstration of tens of thousands of protestors in Washington, D.C.

One woman was arrested, but Seattle police said that the local demonstrtion was largely peaceful.

Marchers wound their way through Seattle's Central District and stopped for a few tense minutes at the 23rd Avenue and Jackson Street Navy recruitment center, where protest leaders planned to present the recruiters with a list of names of the Americans and Iraqis that have died in Iraq.

As demonstrators neared the building, Seattle police officers moved their bicycles to barricade Navy recruitment office, which had locked its door, put up a closed sign.

A woman wearing an orange jumpsuit and black facemask rushed a line of police and curled up next to the door. Officers quickly restrained her hands behind her back and raised her to her feet.

Police took the woman into custody as the crowd chanted, "You should be ashamed," and "Let her go."

The demonstrators took a minute to regroup, then continued east on South Jackson Street toward the arts center, where Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who is facing a military tribunal for disobeying orders, read a prepared speech to a filled auditorium.

Soldiers have a right to choose which wars to fight in, said Watada, who rose to public view after refusing to deploy to Iraq in June 2006. "It is not only our right but our constitutional and moral duty," he said.

Watada's speech also called for people to continue to protest the Iraq War, which he said was unconstitutional. Watada compared his dissent in the current war to the lack of dissent in Nazi Germany during World War II.

"In a system of democracy such as ours, the crimes of the government are the crimes of the people," he said.

Watada ended his speech by suggesting that the American military presence in Iraq was as if Great Britain or the French had come to the United States during the American Civil War.

"What if they killed President Abraham Lincoln, put the South in charge of the country and changed the Constitution to benefit French and British companies?" he said. "If we truly believe in democracy we must listen to what the Iraqis want."