PROVO — Drawing comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq, more than 80 people gathered Tuesday night at Pioneer Park to urge Utah congressmen and senators to vote to bring U.S. troops home.

Participants in the candlelight demonstration, which was sponsored by a group calling itself Mormons for Equality and Social Justice, said President George W. Bush's plan for a surge has failed.

Salt Lake City resident Barton Tippetts said it's time to bring the troops home.

"I put my body on the line! I served my country!" he shouted to the crowd of about 83 people. "Now (Bush) wants to send my grandsons to Iraq. How dare he? Why doesn't he send his daughters to Iraq?"

Tippetts, a 60-year-old Vietnam veteran, said the Vietnam war lasted nine years. He asked how much longer the Iraq war had to last.

"(The troops) want to come home," he said. "The American people want the Iraq war over."

More than 3,700 U.S. troops have died in the Iraq conflict, said Ash Bledsoe, co-chair of Mormons for Equality and Social Justice. Another 25,000 have been injured and nearly 300 non-American soldiers have died. She also said some studies report as many as 600,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed.

"It's time to put an end to this madness," she said. "We cannot stand to lose any more lives."

Bledsoe called on U.S. Congressmen Chris Cannon, Rob Bishop, Jim Matheson and U.S. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett to vote to bring the troops home.

"We are here to take a stand for peace, for diplomacy, for justice and for equality," she said. "We are here in opposition to hatred, to senseless violence and to a brutal system that makes a few men rich at the expense of the lives of many."

William Van Wagenen, a 29-year-old Provo man who was kidnapped in Iraq earlier this year, called Bush's reason for invading Iraq "spurious," especially the claim they wanted to dethrone Saddam Hussein, who was ordering the deaths of thousands of Kurds.

"The idea is absurd," he said. "Why didn't we try to help the Kurds when Saddam was killing them back in the '80s?"

The U.S. merely had an interest in controlling Iraqi oil, Wagenen said.

"Oil is what you need to run any economy," he said. "That is a reason it was important to invade Iraq — to control the oil."

Wagenen didn't limit his criticism to the Bush administration. Democratic candidates speak of time tables for withdrawal, he said, but they are disingenuous.

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"They're pretending because most Americans want the troops out so they're just trying to capitalize on public sentiment," he said.

Amr Al-Azm, a 43-year-old BYU professor of anthropology, said oil wasn't the impetus for the Iraq war. The main goal was to create a moderate Arab state that is sympathetic to Western ideals. Aside from that, he said he enjoyed the demonstration.

"It was nice to see people come out and exercise freedom of speech — even in Provo," he said.


E-mail: jdana@desnews.com

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