From Richmond:

Loud, angry voices greet Bush
Hundreds of demonstrators turn up near Science Museum to vent anger at president

BY MARK BOWES
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Oct 20, 2006



They came to protest President Bush, Sen. George Allen, the Iraqi war, the National Security Agency surveillance program and most everything else conservative and Republican.

They were mostly young and mostly white, and at times very vocal and very profane.

For several hours yesterday, a few hundred people gathered across the street from the Science Museum of Virginia to voice their displeasure in words and signs with Bush.

"Bush and Allen sitting in a tree, K-I-L-L-I-N-G!" the crowd chanted at one point as they awaited the presidential motorcade.

Raunchy signs -- many using language not permitted in a daily newspaper -- were as plentiful as the slogans.

When one man tried persuading protesters to be civil and tone down the hostility, he was shouted down with a crude anti-Bush chant.

Several took a more tactful approach, such as a well-dressed man in a corduroy sport jacket who quietly held a sign describing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld as a war criminal.

"I'm a swing voter," said the man, Kerry Riley, who lives nearby. "I voted for Ronald Reagan and [am] proud of many Republican people in office, but not the likes of Dick Cheney, President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove. I think they keep real bad company."

The Virginia Anti-War Network helped organize the protest, which drew 150 to 400 people at various stages, according to organizers and police estimates.

The purpose, said network spokesman Garrie Rouse, was "to get the message out that there are people that are opposed to Bush, the administration and what he represents. That's the main thing...."