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Washington  – Anti-war protestors Saturday punctuated a long week of political debate in Washington, gathering near the White House and marching toward Capitol Hill while war supporters held their own rallies.

The mass protests followed a week of testimony from the top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, who were optimistic that the recent troop surge had improved security conditions despite their own descriptions of continuing violence and dysfunction.

Congress is frustrated that the Iraqi government has not made use of the upswing in troops to negotiate political compromises among Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic groups.

On Thursday, US President George W Bush told the nation that by summer 2008 he would withdraw the extra 30,000 troops used in the surge, leaving about US 130,000 soldiers in Iraq.

On Friday, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates raised the possibility of cutting the troop commitment even more to reduce the US presence to about 100,000 by January 2009. But Bush also outlined a decades-long military and financial commitment to Iraq similar to the US presence in South Korea since the 1950s.

In Saturday’s protests, Iraq war veterans gathered in Lafayette Park adjoining the White House, saying they volunteered to defend the country but felt what they considered the real aims of the war – imperial ambition in the region – had been kept from them, the Washington Post reported online.

Daniel Black, 24, who swerved in Iraq in 2004, said that he had become politically active after his service, and that his reading made him believe that “the true motives behind this war was imperial ambition and not at all what I signed up for, which was to help protect my country and to express gratitude for being born an American. I felt I had been used and lied to.”

The anti-war protests are to kick off a week of demonstrations.

Parents of children who died in the war joined the demonstrations, as did Vietnam War veterans. “Drop Bush, not bombs,” said one sign.

The anti-war demonstrations were organized by the ANSWER Coalition, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

On Monday, the leftwing activist group moveon.org provoked controversy and denunciation with a full-page ad in The New York Times playing on General Petraeus’ name. “General Betray-us,” the ad charged, claiming that the military leader would only tell Congress what the White House directed him to.

As Petraeus testified in Congress, Republican legislators voiced outrage at the attack on a field commander of US troops in combat. Petraeus read a statement saying he had written his own testimony without vetting by the White House.

At other sites Saturday on Washington’s National Mall, parents of children serving in Iraq waved American flags and demonstrated in support of the war, comparing the rising opposition to the war to the movement against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s.

“Traitors go to Hell,” said one of their signs.