Wisconsinites to Board 14 Buses for Washington Anti-War Rally
ROBERT IMRIE, Associated Press

WAUSAU, Wis. - Some 700 people are signed up to ride buses from Wisconsin to Washington, D.C. for an anti-war rally Saturday to support bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq, organizers said Thursday.
Mike Miles, a peace activist from Luck, said the rally is attracting people of all ages and is expected to draw one of the largest crowds ever to oppose a war. "There are some people who want the troops out immediately. There are some who are going to be calling for an exit strategy that might take a matter of months."
Peace Action Wisconsin has organized 14 buses that will leave Friday from Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Kenosha, Ashland, Wausau and Duluth, Minn., Miles said.
Pearla Moler, a 54-year-old artist from Waukesha, said she has never attended a rally in the nation's capital before but felt it was time to be courageous enough to lend her voice to the anti-war movement.
"We can stop this," she said. "We were misled into a war and the war was supposed to be over and it's not. We are spending billions of dollars in this war and we are not even safe at home."
Organizers hope the rally will attract at least 100,000 people, including Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who drew thousands to a protest she began outside President Bush's Texas ranch in August after her son was killed in Iraq last year.
Sheehan has been on a 25-state bus tour scheduled to end at the Washington march and concert featuring folk singer Joan Baez. She says she wants Bush to more fully justify the war and say what steps he will take to end it.
Rallies against the anti-war activists are also set for this weekend in Washington.
Miles and Moler said they expected news about Hurricane Rita, which was forecast to make landfall between Galveston, Texas and western Louisiana by early Saturday, to overshadow the peace march.
But they said another natural disaster will also focus people's thinking on America's priorities.
"Hurricane Katrina has shown just how wrong our nation's priorities are," Miles said. "Resources that could have been used to save lives are instead tied up in a war that continues to kill Iraqis and U.S. servicepeople."