Opponents of Iraq war make case at Capitol

By Bruce Finley
Denver Post International Affairs Writer

Friday, September 27, 2002 - By background they might lead an invasion.

But a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and an Iraqi dissident outside the Colorado Capitol on Thursday strongly opposed war on Iraq, trying to launch what some analysts see as a simmering protest movement.

Few passers-by lowered cellphones or stopped as Lt. Frank Ohrtman, who analyzed military movements for Navy commanders during the Persian Gulf War, and Ibrahim Kazerooni, an Islamic priest who fled Saddam Hussein's regime in 1974, pressed their case.

The evidence that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction pose an imminent threat is just too thin to justify war, said Ohrtman, 44, now a telecommunications engineer, speaking out publicly for the first time.

"Folks, Iraq has no nuclear weapon," he said. "It appears that the chicken hawks in the White House and Congress are desperate for votes in November."

Meanwhile, momentum for war increased, with President Bush telling lawmakers that Iraq threatens Americans as gravely as al-Qaeda with the capability to pass anthrax or VX nerve gas to terrorists any day. Bush is due in Denver today for a $1,000-a-plate Republican fundraiser.

Yet opponents here and nationwide are enlisting hundreds for anti-war demonstrations. Today, an emerging coalition of "Coloradans Against Bush's War on Iraq" plans to march and chant on Denver's 16th Street Mall outside the Adam's Mark Hotel, where Bush is to speak. Organizers formally requested support from Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman should federal officials invoke post-Sept. 11 "security concerns" to try to mute or hold back the group.

Protesters prepared "No war" signs. Other propaganda in the works: an "I Want You To Invade Iraq" sign featuring Osama bin Laden in lieu of Uncle Sam.

Until now, anti-war activity has been relatively rare, with election-minded Democratic leaders tentative or mum, said Jim Lindsay, senior analyst at the Brookings Institution and a former national security adviser to President Clinton. That's "understandable politically," Lindsay said.

Protest organizer Ethan Hemming, a public schools official, said "people are realizing war is going to cost them a lot more in dollars and long-term commitment."

Colorado Coalition for Middle East Peace leader Stephanie Phibbs, who for two years has protested U.S. sanctions on Iraq, said: "We have a lot of people coming out we've never seen. It's not the far left."

At the Capitol on Thursday, Ohrtman reviewed the intelligence dossier British leader Tony Blair released this week building a case for war. As a Naval intelligence officer, Ohrtman served on an electronic-warfare team monitoring the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and as an analyst in London during the Gulf War before leaving in 1991. He said he recognized a photo in the dossier of an Iraqi al-Hussein missile as "at least 15 years old," and found evidence of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons capabilities to be mostly "extrapolated from information dating from the end of the Gulf War."

A Shiite Islamic priest, or imam, Kazerooni, 45, said he was imprisoned repeatedly under Saddam Hussein. He said friends and relatives left behind were killed.

"I don't think you'll find any Iraqi who would disagree" that Hussein's regime must end, Kazerooni said. But working with Shiites inside Iraq would be more effective and humane than war, which would claim too many lives, he said. "Stable change can only take place if people in Iraq rise up and change the regime."