The front-page article “Kennebunkport rolls out red carpet” (June 25) opens with the wonderful publicity Kennebunkport’s tourist-based economy will receive when Russian President Vladimir Putin comes to town on July 1, and the boost to the local economy that the presence of the Bush family provides.

While people are consuming and trying to get a glimpse of Putin and the president, more American servicemen and women will be dying in Iraq, and more Iraqi men, women and children will be dying, too.

The story also mentioned the demonstrators who will also be there on July 1 to call attention to the abuses of the Bush presidency. These patriotic demonstrators are in the American tradition of dissent, from the Boston Tea Party to the present.

President Bush, by latest polls, has a 65 percent disapproval rating (26 percent approve and 9 percent are unsure, according to Newsweek), much of it based on his handling of the Iraq war. The speakers at the dissenters’ rally will include parents of servicemen, women from Military Families Speak Out, as well as Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, one of the few members of Congress brave enough to speak out about the war (as has Rep. Mike Michaud).

Those who show up in Kennebunkport to hold President Bush accountable for the war in Iraq and for his abuses of the Constitution will represent the many who cannot be there, but who want to bring the country’s troops home.

Joan and Henry Braun, Weld