CRAWFORD, Texas -- About a dozen war protesters, including Daniel Ellsberg and the sister of Cindy Sheehan, were arrested yesterday morning while camping on a roadside near President Bush's ranch in violation of a new county ordinance. The group returned to Texas this week as Bush arrived at his Texas home to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. They came in hopes of reigniting the international attention they attracted in August, when hundreds came to join Sheehan as she camped outside Bush's ranch for 26 days. Sheehan's son, a soldier, was killed in Iraq.
Since August, however, the antiwar movement has expanded beyond Sheehan and her protesters, focusing in recent weeks on Washington and rising discontent in Congress. Protests in Crawford so far have been smaller than in August, when demonstrators from around the country came to the tiny Texas town where Bush spends his vacations.
At that time, Sheehan and her supporters represented the most pointed voices of the antiwar movement. They have been joined in recent weeks by leading Democratic politicians, including Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, who Tuesday called for Bush to admit errors in how he has waged the war, and Representative John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania and a former Marine, who has called for an immediate drawdown in troops.
If Sheehan's supporters do not attract the same level of interest this time around, it will not be for lack of trying. Protesters have events planned for each day this week, including serving an Iraqi meal on Thanksgiving. Sheehan herself, who has not yet arrived in Crawford, is scheduled to lead a rally Saturday.
After the August protests, McLennan County commissioners passed new ordinances that prohibited parking or camping in the ditches along the winding two-lane roads leading to Bush's ranch.
The protesters have been invited by a local rancher to camp on his land, where they have erected a large white tent and hung a banner that reads ''No Pardon for Crawford's Turkey." But they have also challenged the constitutionality of the county's new rules. Early yesterday, a small group set up tents on the same small patch of public land they used in August.
McLennan sheriff's deputies gave the protesters two warnings before arresting the group, including Ellsberg. A former Department of Defense official, Ellsberg became famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers files to the media in 1971 that revealed that the United States was expanding its involvement in Vietnam War.
The White House declined to comment on the arrests.