Baghdad Raid Stirs Protests in L.A. Area

The killing of Iraqi civilians in a U.S.-led bombing raid on Baghdad prompted a spate of small but vocal protests in and around Los Angeles on Thursday, ranging from a silent vigil in front of a Santa Monica think tank to a mock funeral procession at UCLA.

Although few in number, the anti-war protesters were stridently outspoken on one central theme. Wednesday’s attack on a military command-and-control center, which Iraqi officials said was a bomb shelter, was a war crime, they said, and the bombing of Iraq should end immediately.

Anti-war activist Ron Kovic likened the incident to the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which 347 civilians in a Vietnamese village were deliberately shot by U.S. troops. Iraqi officials have attributed nearly 300 deaths so far to the bombing raid on what they claim was a civilian shelter. The U.S. contends, however, that the civilians were inside a military bunker.

“What kind of people are we?” shouted Kovic, who served two tours with the Marines in Vietnam before being disabled by a bullet wound in the back. “What kind of country are we becoming? Are we becoming the Nazis? America is a better place than that. We are a better people than that.”

About 40 people who listened to Kovic’s speech at the noontime rally at the Federal Building in Westwood also signed a mile-long peace scroll, demanding an end to the conflict.

At a news conference earlier in the day, members of the Los Angeles Coalition Against U.S. Intervention in the Middle East also denounced Wednesday’s bombing incident.

“It is time to call things for what they really are,” said coalition member Ahmed Nassif. “Collateral damage and carpet bombing are just sanitized terms for mass murder.”

Former defense analyst Anthony Russo, who gained notoriety for his role in the release of papers that disclosed this country’s secret role in the conduct of the Vietnam War, said the U.S. military has fooled the general public into thinking it can bomb Iraq without inflicting casualties on civilians.

“There is no such thing as surgical bombing,” he said.

Later, Russo and several others staged another in a series of vigils at the Santa Monica offices of the RAND Corp., which he said helped the Pentagon plan the conduct of the Gulf War. While RAND does government research, officials have denied Russo’s allegations.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, in a statement deploring the Baghdad bombing, called on its members to contact public officials and demand a cease-fire in the Middle East.

The hot-line message said the committee feared an American ground campaign was imminent.

At UCLA, a small funeral procession of 150 students, many dressed in black, trudged through the 36,000-student campus for more than an hour and a half in protest of the Wednesday bombing.

As a dumbak , an Egyptian drum, beat slowly, the marchers walked in silence. Some had their faces painted like corpses, with red streaks representing blood. Some carried black cardboard coffins. Others hoisted aloft a 12-foot-high papier-mache depiction of a “universal victim.” Tiny cardboard tears dangled from the figure’s distorted face.

“We want to bring home the idea of war,” said Craig Rosa, 21, a member of the UCLA Alliance to Stop the War. “What happened yesterday (the bombing) should remind everyone that this is a grim situation--a war, not a Nintendo game.”

Some students walking on campus stopped to watch the procession. But others went about their business.

A 28-year-old graduate student in architecture who identified himself only as “Rick” calmly ate ice cream as the demonstrators writhed and moaned several feet away.

“I’m sure it has a lot of meaning for them,” he said, “but I gave that kind of thing up after I graduated. There are better ways of getting your point across.”

Meanwhile, about two dozen war protesters in Orange County set up a makeshift tent city at UC Irvine, with most of them vowing to live there until the war ends.

“The way I see it,” said Karl Yee, 27-year-old son of a career Air Force officer, “if you feel that the war is wrong and immoral, you’ve got two choices. You can go back to your dorm room and turn the stereo up a notch and pretend nothing’s going on, or you can do something about it. We’re doing something about it.”

Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau in Irvine contributed to this report.