WASHINGTON – About 250 people from Maine, traveling on five buses, are expected to join thousands of others this weekend in Washington to protest the war in Iraq.

After a 3 p.m. Friday send-off at Cascade Park, those traveling from Bangor will join others making the 12-hour trek down to Washington in Rockland. The group plans to return to Maine early Sunday morning.

Merry Segal, a Bowdoin College student who helped found Bowdoin Students for Peace, is helping organize the trip. “I think it’s a great tragedy that we’ve had many thousands of Americans die, many of whom did not want to be in Iraq but were just there because they felt as though the military was their only option,” Segal said.

As of Wednesday, at least 1,907 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Alex Grab, 59, a history professor at the University of Maine who will attend the march, said the war exacerbates tensions between the Islamic world and the United States. “There was no terrorism in Iraq beforehand, and now there is an insurgency,” he said.

“I think it’s a dangerous war. I don’t think it’s winnable,” he said.

The weekend kicks off Saturday with a rally at the south end of the White House grounds, followed by a march and a concert.

More than 100,000 people from all parts of the country are expected Saturday, said Bill Dobbs, media coordinator for the protest co-sponsor, United for Peace & Justice, a coalition of more than 1,300 local and national groups that oppose the war in Iraq.

On Sunday there will be grassroots lobbying training to prepare participants for Monday, when there will be 75 to 100 pre-arranged meetings with congressional representatives, Dobbs said.

“It is a war based on lies and it is making us here at home in the United States less safe rather than more safe,” Dobbs said.

Dr. Peter Millard, 52, a family practice physician from Orono, plans to go to the march. Millard’s family befriended a young man who joined the military because he did not have a lot of options after graduating from high school in June 2002, Millard said.

“The military in itself can be a good thing,” he said, but “I don’t think he really thought it out very carefully with regard to the whole situation in Iraq. … Now that he’s there he feels like he’s basically a sitting duck … driving around in convoy waiting to get attacked.”

A recent poll found that an increasing number of Americans say they believe that the war in Iraq has thwarted the U.S. fight against terrorism. About half of the public supports keeping U.S. forces in Iraq until the country is stabilized, according to the poll.

“America [is] really questioning the war,” Millard said.

Not everyone agrees. A coalition of conservative groups has planned a counterdemonstration. On Saturday they will line portions of Pennsylvania Avenue as a sort of “patriotic counterpoint,” said Bill Taylor, spokesman for the conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com, one of the sponsoring organizations.

“Saddam Hussein was a sponsor of international terrorism. He financed it, he trained terrorists, he was a menace to the world,” Taylor said. The leaders of the antiwar movement “have chosen sides in the war against America, and they stand with terrorists,” he added.

President Bush was not honest about weapons of mass destruction being the cause of the war, Grab said. “I personally believe they invaded for oil.”

“It’s just so wrong that 100,000 Iraqi citizens have died for no reason,” Segal said.

The Bush administration previously was on the offensive, Millard said, but is now on the defensive and is paying attention to dissent. “I really think it makes a difference,” he said about the rally.

For more information on the Bangor send-off, call 942-9343.