WASHINGTON - Protestors briefly disrupted a speech by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the National Press Club, chanting, "How many children did you kill today?"

MR. RUMSFELD, YOU'RE FIRED! Protesters interupt during a speech given by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington, September 10, 2003. Rumsfeld talked about the need for continued U.S. military efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. REUTERS/Larry Downing

The protesters were escorted from a visitors gallery overlooking a hall where Rumsfeld was addressing a gathering of journalists on Iraq.

"Mr. Rumsfeld you're fired," a woman yelled as Rumsfeld was beginning a speech on Iraq and the war on terrorism that followed the attacks on the US Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

"Your foreign policy is based on lies. The war in Iraq is unjust and illegal and the occupation is immoral," she said.

Shouts went up of "Bring the troops home now!" and "Tell us when the troops are coming home. They need to come home."

Protesters unfurled a banner from the gallery before being led away, chanting, "Hey, Mr. Rumsfeld, what do you say? How many children did you kill today."

Rumsfeld, watching from below, turned back to his audience and said: "Well, now."

"You know I just came in from Baghdad, and there are now 100 newspapers in the free press in Iraq -- in the free Iraq -- where people are able to say whatever they wish, people are debating, people are discussing, something they had not done for decades," he said.

Less than five months ago, the Iraqi regime was still filling mass graves with the bodies of men, women and children and executing people in its prisons, he said.

"It was still repressing thought and speech in that country," he said. "And that has ended."

Copyright 2003 © AFP

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