Thousands of Americans from more than 100 cities surrounded the White House in a peaceful anti-war protest on Saturday, in perhaps their last chance to dissuade the Bush administration from invading Iraq.
Carrying signs with such messages as "Stop Mad Cowboy Disease" above a picture of US President George W. Bush, the demonstrators beat drums, sang songs and chanted as they marched from the Washington Monument to the White House and finally to the Justice Department.
"President Bush, listen to your people - the American people before you today, who say, 'No war in Iraq,'" Howard University student Ms Peta Lindsay told a cheering crowd at a midday rally.
The demonstrators, from throughout the country and across the ideological spectrum, waved flags and placards and chanted slogans like "Send our troops home" and "No Blood for Oil."
Some flew rainbow kites with "peace" written on them. "The Iraqi people are not our enemies - they are our sisters and brothers," another Howard University student, Ms Caneisha Mills, told the rally.
President Bush spent Saturday away from Washington at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. But he used his weekly radio address to brace the public for war, saying he saw little hope that Iraq would disarm peacefully.
Despite his absence, police cars kept the demonstrators to a route about a block's width away from the White House.
Washington police said the event was largely peaceful but that five people were arrested for "unlawful entry" of World Bank headquarters, several blocks from the White House and the demonstration route.
Today President Bush heads to Portugal's Azores islands for an emergency summit with the leaders of Britain and Spain in a final pursuit of a UN resolution that would set the stage for war against Iraq over its alleged weapons of mass destruction programs.
The resolution sponsored by the three countries is the subject of a bitter fight among UN Security Council members.