Hunter Wilson / Daily News Participants in the MoveOn.org vigil held at the corner of 31W and Fairview gather around to listen to Claudia Hanes speak on Tuesday evening.

&#8220There’s blood in your oil!” Dan Givens of Upton yelled at a passing Lincoln Town Car.

He was one of about two dozen who gathered Tuesday night at the corner of Fairview Avenue and U.S. 31-W By-Pass to demand the pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq. Waving signs and holding candles, they gathered in a ring on the sidewalk to read aloud the numbers and hometowns of American soldiers killed in the war from Jan. 1 through mid-August. Each person read two or three days’ worth of casualties, then handed the clipboard on. In the 40 minutes it took to read, the list made it around the circle twice.

Claudia Hanes, a retired teacher at Moss Middle School and organizer of the local protest, read off a summary of the toll since the American invasion on March 19, 2003: at least 70,000 – and perhaps as many as 200,000 – dead Iraqis, 300 non-American coalition troops killed, more than 3,700 American troops dead and 25,000 wounded.

Aug. 28 was a day picked by liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org for protests to Congress against the Iraq war, called &#8220National Take a Stand Day,” and people turned out in hundreds of cities nationwide for similar vigils.

The intent is to pressure the U.S. Congress to order American withdrawal of troops from an &#8220unwinnable religious civil war in Iraq,” Hanes said.

For several months, the White House has urged its many critics to wait until Gen. David Petraeus, field commander in Iraq, delivers a status report to Congress in mid-September. Bush has said he will make Petraeus’ report his guide to determining the future course in Iraq.

Although Petraeus is delivering the report, it’s actually being written by the White House.

&#8220They’ll try to convince Congress that it’s working, and try to keep it going longer,” Hanes said.

She and others are now worried that President Bush is gearing up to attack Iran too, and wants people to contact the local offices of U.S. Rep. Ron Lewis, R-Cecilia, and Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, urging those officials to end the current war without launching a new one.

Most drivers who passed the group in Bowling Green ignored the protest, or stared blankly. Among those who did react, the honks, yells and waves of support far outnumbered the few disapproving fingers and jeers.

&#8220When I was out on this corner Memorial Day, I was ‘an army of one,’ ” Hanes said, adopting the current U.S. Army recruiting slogan. &#8220Now, take a look,” she said, gesturing at the crowd, which included age groups from high school to the mid-60s.

Dan Givens said he’s been publicly opposing the war since before it started, and protested the Vietnam War in 1969 while a student at Western Kentucky University.

&#8220All wars are the same,” he said. &#8220They’re horrible. The rich make money, and it’s the poor who are asked to pay.”

Christa Gaskill of Bowling Green, a Western student, said she heard about the protest – which Hanes organized by e-mail – from several different groups. A number of environmental organizations were represented there, if unofficially.

Turning President Richard Nixon’s famous claim of support for Vietnam on its head, Nancy Givens, chairwoman of BG Green, said the vocal protesters were speaking for a &#8220silent majority” of Americans who now oppose the war.

&#8220Internationally, the U.S. is looked upon as a terrorist,” she said. &#8220We call other people terrorists, but. … ”

Hanes said she plans more local demonstrations, and is trying to organize a busload for a MoveOn.org-sponsored march Sept. 15 in Washington, D.C. She’d never organized a protest before this one, but MoveOn.org provided directions on how to set one up, she said.

&#8220I didn’t even decide to do it until last Thursday,” Hanes said.

She decided when she saw her son, Chris, 26, a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, off to his second tour in Iraq.

Although her younger son, Kyle Smith, 21, opposes the war, Chris supports it, Hanes said.

&#8220We go round and round,” she said. &#8220He’s convinced that we should be in Iraq, he’s convinced that Saddam Hussein was funding al-Qaida. I don’t think it’s an accident that the military has been brainwashed into believing this.”

Bush and his supporters have often said that public opposition to war aids and encourages terrorists. Hanes said no one has made that claim directly to her, and she disagrees anyway.

&#8220Al-Qaida doesn’t know what Claudia Hanes in Bowling Green thinks, but if they did, it’s not going to change their mission,” she said. &#8220Seems to me that if I don’t have the right to disagree with my government’s involvement in a war, then al-Qaida does win.”