Police have arrested more than 100 Iraq war protesters in San Francisco and New York City on the fourth anniversary of the US invasion. Officers outnumbered the fewer than 100 protesters outside the stock exchange building in New York's financial district on Monday. "Stop the money, stop the war," they chanted as police hauled them away. Demonstrators said they were protesting against defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Halliburton and General Electric. Fabian Bouthillette, 26, a teacher who served for two years in the US navy, said US soldiers and Iraqi civilians "are dying so that an elite few can profit".
A police spokesman said 44 people were arrested. The protest had no impact on the stock exchange's trading.
In San Francisco, dozens of demonstrators, many of them old enough to have once protested against the Vietnam war in the 60s and early 70s, conducted a "die in" by lying on the sidewalk and pretending to be dead. Some wore fake blood to recall the more than 3,200 US soldiers killed in the Iraq war. Many later moved to obstruct Market Street, running through the city's central business district. Neville Gittens, a police spokesman, said: "As soon as they went out there we started making arrests. They were warned."
Another spokesman said police arrested 57 people in two separate San Francisco locations. Polls show most Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, and thousands have rallied against the war in recent days nationwide.