This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Gathering of Eagles

  • Gathering of Eagles vs Moonbats (Updates)

    UPDATES: As I sift through my photos, videos and other blogs, I’ve been updating this post since this morning. Just scroll through and you’ll see. Whew! I think I’m done. Enjoy!

    Editor’s Note: If you don’t see the photos, it’s because your system is behind a WebSense internet filter and it blocks Photobucket.

    Well, not unlike the stupid hippies that they are, they were HOURS late. They were supposed to start at noon, but they didn’t get to the Capitol until 3 pm. While we were among them at Lafayette Park, one of the event organizers complained over the loudspeakers that people were having trouble showing up because, mysteriously, Metro had shut down the Blue and Orange Lines (from Virginia and GW University) so they weren’t going to kick off until one o’clock.

    But my friend had arrived moments before on the Blue Line from Virginia – it hadn’t been shut down – so another moonbat lie.We figured they were making excuses for their pitiful numbers.

    By the time they got to the Capitol, the general consensus was that they had less than 4,000 people, there were rumors of only 2,000 – but I’m pretty sure there were more than that. Most of them were moving towards Union Station before the die-in started, so their numbers shrank by about half within 20 minutes of their arrival at the Capitol. In a city of a 1/2 million where a good 10% are college students with little to do on a Saturday afternoon the first few weeks of the semester, a few thousand is a pretty shabby turnout.

    This first picture is an upside down flag in Lafayette Park. But they still love this country, right? But the remarkable thing about it (and it wasn’t the only upside down flag) is that all of the flags the moonbats carried through the march were right-side up. So that tells me that someone made a conscious effort to tell all of the upside down flag guys to right their flags – and you know it was for their image, not because of their ideology;

    Another of the upside down flags in front of the White House that mysteriously righted itself before the march;

    Robin from Chickenhawk Express asked me to get photos of folks in uniform, so here’s one;

    An Arty officer from the 24th Division – I’m pretty sure the 24th Division was inactivated before President Bush became president – so he’s making a vacuous point.

    This fellow has more money than brains – he’s way too old to have been issued that uniform by the Army;

    And this Veterans For Peace stuff really cheeses me off. It hints that I’m a Veteran For War because I don’t belong to their testoterone-deficient organization. I’m not “for” war – I’m “for” national security and given the current enemy, war is the only answer. If you think war isn’t the answer, you didn’t understand the question.

    And by the looks of his scraggly ass, he was probably a chapter case anyway.

    If you don’t have a uniform to wear to the event, well, just wear your yacht skipper’s hat;

    Too many signs and not enough moonbats;

    This guy stalked me until I took his picture, so it should make him happy that he made the blog;

    I guess he’s madder at Israel than he is at Bush. But, if you wanted to take a whacky picture with the President, they had cutouts;

    This is my personal nemisis, he stalks me at every event, I have a video of him today in which he calls me “an enemy of peace” (Actually, I’m thinking of changing the name of the blog to Enemy of Peace – it has a nice ring to it, ya know). He’s wearing the same pretentious “Peace” shirt he wears at every event, too. What I did to piss off the Travelocity Roaming Gnome, I’ll never know.

    I’d like for this fellow to name one instance where nonviolence worked to solve anything when dealing with babarians;

    The real rockstars of this rally, though, was supposed to be Adam Kokesh and his IVAW crowd. But I didn’t see them – well I saw them, but only as shadows moving around inside their rockstar bus away from the crowds and adoring fans;

    Apparently, they’re not so hot on attacking Iran, either;

    Well, we left the moonbats behind and went to the Gathering of Eagles down on the National Mall.

    A much more lively group. Here’s a video of a Gold Star father’s speech to the crowd. (I’d embed this stuff if I could figure the darn thing out.

    And the highlight of the day for me, was meeting Michelle Malkin;

    You’ll notice the jumpwings on my cap are on a 1/325 AIR flash – I wore it today to honor the son of my good friend, COBDanny, who happens to be in Iraq while assigned to my old Battalion, the Red Falcons – the spearpoint of the surge. Hooah!

    The funny thing is, I took this picture of Michele Malkin just prior and didn’t even recognize her;

    The GOE group had better signs, too;

    When the Moonbats finally started their parade of fools – THREE HOURS LATE – our side was out in front of them;

    And this is the only sign that I saw that really expressed the moonbats true feelings;

    In this photo, the protesters stretched a huge red banner across the road to keep the protesters bunched up so it looked like a bigger crowd. But it took about five minutes for them to pass as this video shows;

    As this video attests, they thinned out pretty quickly. And this video shows how many they ended with at the Capitol – hardly the hundred thousand that’s being bandied about the web. And it hardly looks like the tightly compressed crowds that the media has been showing in their photos.

    This is a video of Leftist fellow recruiting for the Army. And this ugly cow kept mooing the same thing over and over – “Take your ass to Iraq”. That’s the only response they have – “Go to Iraq”. Why? So we won’t be here to hold you accountable for your intellectually vacant yammering?

    This is a video of a Gold Star father confronting a protester.

    Meet Jake. His right forearm and hand are missing from an IED attack. I found him standing with his friend outside where the die-in was going on. I talked with him a while and I asked him how he was holding up, rockhard troop that he is. He answered, “This isn’t what I went to war for, dude. These people suck.”

    They sure do, Jake, they sure do.

    Michele Malkin has more about GOE at Walter Reed and the Live blogging today’s event. More from Gateway Pundit and Robin at Chickenhawk Express with the view from outside – all the stuff I missed because I was alternately surrounded by goofuses and heroes. Redhunter was there with great report from the GOE crowd, too. One thing is certain – everyone got pictures of Michele Malkin. That little girl was all over this thing.

    The San Francisco Sentinel blog touts the ANSWER demonstration as the largest protest since January (which isn’t hard since all of the others were flops and January wasn’t so hot, either). ANSWER’s numbers are just over the top; they claim 100,000 marched with them – that’s just ridiculous. Even the AP story they use as a source only says “several thousand”. Like I said, there were less than four thousand that diminished to two thousand when the march ended. There were probably one or two thousand counter-protesters.

    Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has the news on the arrests at the DIe-in (Geez, I missed that part).

    More from Kate of A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective – another MM sighting. Age of Hooper catches the corpse of Ramsey Clark on parade. Keep watching the sky – I mean Skye at Midnight Blue. I met her there, too, so I’m sure she’ll have some pics up soon (she also got a picture with Michelle Malkin). Big Dog wandered into the moonbat crowd when they were at their slobbering worst, as Big Dogs usually do and comes out unscathed with a report of biting incidents.

    Powerline has pics of the Die-In and Victory Caucus has tons of photos and links to more blogs. Pam at BlogmeisterUSA and PC Free Zone has more pictures of the GOE side.

    For some reason, veterans getting arrested is more honorable than veterans who continue to serve their brothers and sisters in uniform. Some Leftists wish for the good old days, while others think we’re “scared little babies“.

    The Washington Post calls it “Dueling Demonstrations“, but it’s not really a duel when one side is has no clue what he’s doing. Bloodthirsty Liberal conducts a post-mortem on media coverage.

    The Washington Times provides a more balanced account than the Post or AP.

    Since Kokesh went out of his way to get arrested a week ago Thursday for putting up posters in a National Park with the press on hand to record his arrest, and since he also went out of his way to get arrested yesterday (Saturday, Sept. 15th) I gotta figure that they sense the failing support for their movement and they’re trying to whip up some outrage among the sheep. Like I said last week, we’re witnessing the death throes of the anti-war movement. Just like the American people are tired of hearing about the war, they’re also getting tired of hearing about the primadonnas of the anti-war movement.

    They ride in rock star buses, play to the echo chamber and jet off to another scripted event, and Americans understand that they’re just trying to make a living by not working.

  • Protest preview

    Well, tomorrow is ANSWER‘s and IVAW‘s “Mass” march against the war. They plan on meeting up at the White House at noon from all I can gather and meandering along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol for their “Die-In”. The Gathering of Eagles, Free Republic and Protest Warriors will be lining their route.

    GOE plans on a rally at 9am on the National Mall near 7th Street. Protest Warriors will be protecting the Navy Memorial from the same type of injustice that has been done to it in the past.

    Yours truly plans to arrive at the Farragut North Metro Station (on the Red line) about 10 am (after my morning bike ride and my SOS breakfast at the Walter Reed mess hall) and I’ll get ya’all some pictures of the hairy-legged crowd as I walk about a half-mile to the good guys. I’m trying to find an internet hotspot near the march route, but I’ve not been successful so far, so ya’all might hafta wait until I get home before I get the pictures up on the blog. But I’ll take my laptop just in case.

    On my quick recon around the city today, I haven’t seen the usual hippie-types anywhere. Usually I see them straggling in from the bus station and the train station all day long, but they’ve been noticably absent today. I get the impression that Kokesh‘s expectation for 4,000 die-in volunteers might be a little ambitious.

    I’ll grant that they may have lots of buses show up at the last minute, but, as I said, this pre-protest day is a whole lot quieter than the ones I’ve seen in the past.

    On the other hand, I have seen several motorcycles flying American flags cruisng the city. But anyway we’ll see tomorrow.

    If anyone is planning to link up with us tomorrow (I have two so far that have expressed an interest), you can catch up me at Farragut North Metro Station or at the Navy Memorial. I’ll email my cell number if necessary. Keep watching this space for photos!Â

  • Vietnam Wall defaced; consider that shark jumped (Updated)

    SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM FOR UPDATE 

    My first task every morning (after a Winston and some coffee) is to check this corner of the internet for comments to my posts. This morning I found one from Robin at Chickenhawk Express who left this;

    Jonn – I don’t want to fire you up to much but you REALLY need to see this;

    The Vietnam Memorial Wall in DC Has Been Defaced

     

    Well, I went into a funk that I really can’t shake this morning. After I sent the links from Robin’s post and the post from tgslTakoma at Free Republic to several bloggers to get the word out, I tried to write on another subject but I just can’t assemble a coherent thought. I checked the Gathering of Eagles website and they have a link to the Free Republic report. 

    I’m writing this in hopes that the word gets out, I haven’t seen anything on the local news or in the local papers. This should be the death knell of the anti-war movement. This what they came to town to do back in March, and they finally got their opportunity before the Patriots came to town. I suspect that it was those idiot Black Bloc creeps – but really any of those cretins on the Left are capable of such sociopathic behavior.

    Redstate’s Bluey interviewed some park Service employee who claims the damage may be permanent;

    I spoke to a National Park Service employee who was livid that someone would vandalize the memorial. “It’s like defacing a grave,” he told me. When I asked if there were any clues as to who was responsible, he told me videotape was being reviewed. It is believed the damage was done on Friday night. Because the monument never closes, it could have taken place late in the evening when no one was around.

    I remember the email I got back when I covered the Gathering of Eagles I in March from some little immature weasel who claimed that the Left had a right to do what they want to the Vietnam Memorial because it was their monument, too. There are no monuments to cowardice in this country and there are no names of draft evaders or protesters on the Wall.

    As I predicted yesterday, the Left is pulling out all of the stops. They’ve begun their disparaging of the troops – it began this past weekend with our honored dead, and our hallowed ground. This weekend on Pennsylvania Avenue between 12th and 7th Streets, this crap ends. 

    UPDATE: Michele Malkin has an update that the Park Service has admitted that the Wall has been defaced. Funny how they denied it before the protest this weekend and then suddenly, the protest ends and they fess up.

  • Anti-war movement’s death throes

    Since I went to the Gathering of Eagles counter-protest last March 17th, I’ve been convinced that the pathetic and pointless, culture of personalities, anti-war movement is in its death throes. In fact, I’ve wrote about it several times on this blog. The sparse participation at the March on the Pentagon convinced me of that – it was a Saturday morning in the middle of the Spring semester in a hugely college town, yet they could barely scrape together enough people to outnumber the counter protesters – if they did.

    Well, apparently, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard arrived at the same conclusion, for different reasons, in this week’s issue;

    It would be silly to make too much out of one item on a Time blog. But it does suggest that even the respectable elements of the antiwar movement have jumped the shark. Unwilling seriously to debate the choices before us, and the consequences of those choices, antiwar advocates are now down to name-calling.

    Well, that’s not all. I see on the Gathering of Eagles blog, the Move America Forward tour and it’s organizer have been threatened by Daily Kos diarists (the post was obviously removed but the evidence remains). Marooned in Marin has more substantial evidence of the Left’s intentions towards the MAF caravan. When the Left resorts to threats, they’re losing – and we’re winning!Â

    More evidence, in my mind, is the fact that the anti-war movement’s studly hero, a crybaby by the name of Adam Kokesh, whom I’ve written about extensively here, is calling for a longer commitment than just one day from the mindless zombies of the Left;

    To kick off the week of action, after the rally we will march from the White House to the Capitol, and go straight into a mass civil-disobedience die-in around the Peace Monument. The die-in will be led by an Honor Guard of Iraq Veterans Against the War who will simulate a 21-Gun Salute before taps is played to initiate the die-in. We are asking as many members of VFP as possible to sign up to wear cammies and die-in around us to symbolize the American cost of this war. We will be encircled by bolts of red cloth to symbolize the Iraqi deaths and invite anyone else from the rally to participate in the die-in.

    Sunday will be a day of teach-ins including a Truth In Recruiting Workshop led by IVAW. That evening, IVAW DC will be holding a benefit concert. Monday is National Truth In Recruiting Day, and there will be numerous activities planned and we will need your help with an action at the main recruiting office in DC. Tuesday is Congressional Challenge Day led by Tina Richards. Wednesday or Thursday will be Veterans Lobbying Day, and Friday is the Moratorium. Also, the 14th, the Friday before the rally, is the IVAW CD Release Party. All of these events are on the calendar at Sept15.org.

    I doubt very much that they’ll be able to keep the interest of 15-second attention span generation for an entire week. Especially if there’s a sign of rain, or the temp drops below 70 degrees, or they walk past the Hard Rock Cafe on their way to the protest, or if  American Idol Rewind is on their cable TVs in their hotel rooms.

    I think its funny that Kokesh is pushing for a “Truth in Recruiting” day – since he lied to all of the major media outlets and told them he’d been discharged from the military before his participation in protests and that the military was targeting him for harrassment. Kokesh wouldn’t know the truth if it bit his face.

    William Kristol calls for the anti-war crowd to action against Kokesh’s “Die-In”;

    Will mainstream antiwar groups and antiwar politicians denounce this action, which is scheduled to begin the weeklong protest? Will the respectable parts of the antiwar movement stand with veterans and veterans’ families who intend to protest this disgusting appropriation of their loved ones’ names? Surely most critics of the war still have a sense of decency.

    Obviously, Kristol has more faith in human nature than I. This last Spring, Kokesh, while still in the military, roamed the National Mall in uniform with his cohorts, pretending to be on a patrol in Iraq. They forced  tourists into makeshift prison cells and began humiliating them to simulate the way our troops treat innocent Iraqi civilians. There is no expectation of a “sense of decency” from people so steeped in their hatred for this country and the troops that defend us.

    Kokesh has an axe to grind with the Marines – he was reduced in rank and placed in the inactive reserves. On his blog, in which he calls himself “Sergeant Kokesh” (which in itself is a lie – he was dischaged as a private E-2 – he was busted. I guess he thinks that he gets to call himself whatever he wants now) describes his tour as a “civil affairs specialist” and says that his first tour soured him on the war. But he neglects to mention that before his second tour (for which he volunteered, by the way) he was busted for smuggling an Iraqi pistol back to the US after the first tour. Doesn’t sound like the actions of someone destined to be the public face of the anti-war movement, does it?

    Regardless, I plan on being there to bring you the photos of the pathetic end of the anti-war movement – as well as photos of the Gathering of Eagles who plan on lining Saturday’s event route for GOEIII. Tentatively, some fellow bloggers are planning to meet me there so, there should be lots to write about on September 15th.

    Anyone else planning on being there, drop me a line at admin@thisainthell.us Â

    Others blogging on the same thing as my meandering mind;

    Robin at Chickenhawk Express on William Kristol

    Skye at Midnight Blue on GOE III

    Michele Malkin on Answering ANSWER and GOE III

    SWAC Girl on GOE III

    The Redhunter on GOE III

    DragonMG at Tanker Brothers wonders “Where’s Harry?” when the GOE is there to welcome home Nevada’s sons and daughters, but Reid isn’t. While Dadmanly recounts Reid’s conversion to surrender monkey over the death of the first Nevadan in Iraq.

    Speaking of sharkjumping and the Daily Kos, Markos may have just jumped the shark by calling his readers gullible fools (from Newsbusters’ PJ Gladnik).

  • The surge against the surge is failing, or not

    Carl Levin and Dick Durbin concede that the surge has had spectacular results against al Qaeda – as if they could even begin to believe their lyin’ eyes. But they add the proviso that the Iraqi government is failing the progress our troops are making for them. The Washington Post, in the meantime, chooses to follow the leader of Congress’ “Out of Iraq Caucus” Jan Schakowsky; adament, unbendable intentionally ignorant of the realities of the world;

    …the outspoken antiwar liberal resolved to keep her opinions to herself. “I would listen and learn,” she decided.

    At times that proved a challenge, as when Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told her congressional delegation, “There’s not going to be political reconciliation by this September; there’s not going to be political reconciliation by next September.” Schakowsky gulped — wasn’t that the whole idea of President Bush’s troop increase, to buy time for that political progress?
     
    But the real test came over a lunch with Gen. David H. Petraeus, who used charts and a laser pointer to show how security conditions were gradually improving — evidence, he argued, that the troop increase is doing some good.

    Still, the U.S. commander cautioned, it could take another decade before real stability is at hand. Schakowsky gasped. “I come from an environment where people talk nine to 10 months,” she said, referring to the time frame for withdrawal that many Democrats are advocating. “And there he was, talking nine to 10 years.”

    Imagine that! A part of the world that has been steeped in turmoil for more than five decades won’t be tamed in the next few months – it may take another decade to make 6th Century throwbacks stop bombing schools and marketplaces. Of course, this realization only reinforces Schakowsky’s knee-jerk, emotive calls to pull the troops out of Iraq and condemn the region to another several decades of horror and injustice.

    The lack of political progress among Iraq’s rival factions and Petraeus’s estimate of the time needed to stabilize the nation left Schakowsky all the more convinced that Democrats must force Bush to begin bringing troops home.

    Insuring that in another 15 years we’ll be forced to go back and finish the job AGAIN. The Democrats and the media forced us to abandon the attack on Hussein in 1991 – before there was al Qaeda, before the cowardly actions over Mogadishu made the world less fearful of American resolve. Before our response to agression became a few cruise missiles fired at empty tents, empty buildings and asprin factories – before we merely put terrorists in jail for their attacks on the World Trade Center.

    But Democrats aren’t happy to undermine our own security, they especially enjoy deriding the Iraqis – causing our allies to lash out;

    Nouri al-Maliki, who is fighting to hold his government together, issued a series of stinging ripostes against a variety of foreign officials who recently have spoken negatively about his leadership. But those directed at Democrats Clinton, of New York, and Levin, of Michigan, were the most strident.

    “There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin. They should come to their senses,” al-Maliki said at a news conference.

    The New York Times decides that what the Vietnamese went through wasn’t so bad, so maybe we should let the Iraqis suffer for a few decades under the boot of radical Islamism;

    Vietnam today is a unified and stable nation whose Communist government poses little threat to its neighbors and is developing healthy ties with the United States. Mr. Bush visited Vietnam last November; a return visit to the White House this summer by Nguyen Minh Triet was the first visit by a Vietnamese head of state since the war.

    “The Vietnam comparison should invite us to think harder about how to minimize the consequences of our military failure,” Mr. Bacevich added. “If one is really concerned about the Iraqi people, and the fate that may be awaiting them as this war winds down, then we ought to get serious about opening our doors, and to welcoming to the United States those Iraqis who have supported us and have put themselves and their families in danger.”

    I love how the Left likes to point out the “military failures” in Vietnam, yet they can’t point to a single military defeat. The only failure in Vietnam was the anti-war crowd’s failure to admit that we should have shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia in the early years – that would have cut the time we fought the war in half and South Vietnam would be a democracy today. Just like we should seal off Syria and Iran from Iraq today – but like Nixon’s actions in Cambodia, the Left would call it an “expansion of the war” – instead of an attempt to actually win the war.

    On August 5th the Washington Post started a series on Congressmembers in their districts during their summer recess and explained the dilema facing them;

    With Congress beginning its summer recess, supporters of the war are expecting attacks and protests from war opponents, and many lawmakers are looking for bipartisan consensus on a new war strategy that has so far eluded them.

    Maybe they’re having such trouble because instead of finding a “bipartisan consensus” they should be looking for a working military solution – or they should sit down and stfu.

    I wonder why Tzun Tsu and vonClauswitz never mentioned that wars should be fought by committees and consensus? Maybe because it doesn’t work – have the Democrats never heard of “unity of command”?

    Of course, in a last desparate attempt to save the surge against the surge, the Left turns to Huffington Post to undermine the good order and discipline of the military  (hat tip to COBDanny) and urges General Pace to fire President Bush. Ya know, like the militaries in third world countries do all of the time. And HuffPo commenters heartily agree;

    Unfortunately, the fact remains that there are serious reasons to consider any and all scenarios, or remedies because of GWB, the worst President ever. Why should anyone else care about the rule of law when he hasn’t concerned himself with it for the 6 long years while he has crapped all over the Constitution and ignored law after law?

    I think that the creative thinking by Mr. Lewis should be commended and that if General Pace is the patriot he claims to be, he should consider the suggestion. My God, our nation as we know it is at stake. 

     I’d like to know, just for my own reference, what laws the President has ignored and when he “crapped on the Constitution”. Fortunately for me, I won’t be waiting with bated breath.

    But the anti-war Left loves this country and the Constitution, don’t they?

    I BELIEVE IT IS NOW TIME TO DEMAND AND SCHEDULE THE SECOND CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

    We have GOT to get this little problem of hubris and ‘reinterpretation’ by the Whiggy ones settled once and for all, so U.S. can move forward.

    They love the Constitution so much, they want to rewrite it – as if I’d just stand aside and let them. Maybe they should put it to a national referendum – but they couldn’t do that, actually. Then they’d find out how many Americans oppose them in an undeniable actual vote count instead of one of those vacuous polls to which they cling so dearly. Or a lopsided Electoral College vote that favors the people who drain the country’s coffers over those who fill it. I doubt it’d even be close.

    CoBDanny reads my mind, and even pirates my legal research into the Smith Act to explain to the little worm why his idea just won’t work and why he should probably do some jail time for good measure.

    The death throes of the surge against the surge will be played out on September 15th in Washington – and I’ll be there to chronicle the last desparate gasp. So, too, will the Gathering of Eagles. Anyone else going?

  • Links to keep you busy; Best of the Web as I see it

    First, from Don Carl out in California who emailed me this YouTube link. Apparently, our soldiers have more than al Qaeda to worry about in Iraq.

    Skye at MidnightBlue (who looks fabulous in her new silk dress, by the way) sends along a link to to her reportage (complete with photos) on the Cindy Sheehan demostration in Philly on Tuesday. Skye and the patriots who live in our nation’s first capitol apparently ran the old bag out of town like our brothers and sisters in Charlotte. Eagles up!

    For those of you who are still operating under the misapprehension that the Left still supports our troops, check out this post by Chap at Chapomatic. If the links he posts don’t make you angry, you’re a stronger person than I am. Mred at Invicible Armor berates the Democrats for recreating the fall of Saigon in Baghdad. If that’s not enough to get your blood boiling, read COBDanny’s post about the Demo candidates and the yearly Kos.

    By way of Curt at Flopping Aces, I read that  Ace at Ace of Spades thinks he knows who “Scott Thomas” is. More background on “Scott Thomas” from Chickenhawk Express, Gateway Pundit and Laughing Wolf at Blackfive. While you’re at Blackfive, see Uncle Jimbo’s post on Okinawa Jack Murtha’s latest chickenshit plan to surrender to anyone that will accept his portly being. 

    And Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports that the Pentagon claims that al Qaeda is looking for unconventional weapons. Wonder where they’d get ’em from?

    GI Jane at The Foxhole has the last word on Ward Churchill.

    Mike at Lamplighter has staggering statistics on modern human trafficking.

    Scott Thomas Update: Since GI Jane commented, I’ve done some looking around and see I’m faaaaaar behind the proverbial Eight-Ball on this. Powerline  and Michele Malkin are out front.

    Wouldn’t you just know it that I was in A Co. 1/18th (Scott Thomas Beauchamps company) when they were part of the 3rd Brigade of the 24th Division (for the old troops that was after they were redesignated from the old Dollar-Ninety-Seven Brigade at Benning). I hope his first sergeant lights his young ass up.

  • Sheehan and her tens of tens in DC

    The media has pretty much tossed Cindy Sheehan aside as their “ultimate moral authority” figure on the war against terror. She’s been on a whirlwind tour of the South spreading her ultimate moral authority over everyone who’ll listen. She finally made it to DC yesterday with her tens of tens supporters (about 300, actually) and the best coverage I’ve seen is from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank;

    As a retiree, Cindy Sheehan was the Michael Jordan of the peace movement.

    “I am going to take whatever I have left and go home,” she announced in her May 29 “resignation letter” as antiwar activist. “Good-bye America.”

    The retirement — and Sheehan’s attempt to “be normal,” as she put it — lasted exactly 34 days. On July 2, she un-retired after hearing that President Bush had commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. And yesterday, bullhorn in hand, she led a march of demonstrators from Arlington National Cemetery to the Capitol, where she ended the day by getting arrested.

    Yeah, that’s what did it, Scooter Libby’s pardon. She probably heard in the local Starbucks (where she was panhandling) someone said “Bush can’t do that” and she accepted it as legal advice. Or she just got tired of not being on the nightly news.

    Sheehan then waded into constitutional law, and the little- known mandatory impeachment clause. “Impeachment is not a fringe movement — it is mandated in our Constitution,” she asserted. “Nancy Pelosi had no authority to take it off the table. If she takes impeachment off the table, what else will she take off the table — the First Amendment?”

    It’s funny how the Left always finds things that aren’t in the Constitution. There must be a broom closet somewhere of all of the rules the founders didn’t want to clutter up the one-page document and then gave the keys to the industrial-age equivalence of a moonbat who drags out the dusty unknown rules on cue.

    Milbank claims that the Sheehanistas were a bit paranoid;

    …by yesterday Sheehan even thought the planes departing from National Airport were conspiring against her. “They stepped up the air traffic,” she complained as a jet interrupted her speech.

    The paranoid also may have been suspicious about the low-flying military helicopter as the marchers crossed Arlington Memorial Bridge, or the man in the car with U.S. government plates who took pictures of the demonstrators as they reached the Tidal Basin — “for personal use,” he claimed.

    Yup, all of the airlines got together and decided to make their flights all leave while Cindy was speaking to the tens of tens gathered to hear her screech. Be sure to read the whole Milbank article – finally a fair treatment of Sheehan, replete with accounts of counter protesters from Free Republic and Gathering of Eagles.

    Aside from Milbank’s video, I haven’t found any pictures yet.

    But actually, Sheehan’s experience with the Democrats should serve as a warning to all single-issue voters, especially the Republicans (who tend to throw the party under the bus whenever a candidate doesn’t support our particular cause – resulting in eight years of Clinton). Sheehan was an icon of the anti-war Left, and now in the words of Bob Parks of Black and Right, she’s the Paris Hilton of the anti war Left – in just 34 days.

  • Gathering of Eagles in September

    The Gathering of Eagles, whose exploits I’ve photo’d and written about several times, are planning more counter-demonstrations in DC in September. The details aren’t ironed out yet according to their website, but apparently they plan to demonstrate against Congress on September 10th and counter-demonstrate against the ANSWER Coalition of kooks on the 15th.

    You might notice that one of the officers of GOE posted on my latest Sheehan story below and announced the counter-demonstration planned September. I’ve seen the ANSWER posters around town and wondered if the GOE was going to be there, too. Happily, they will.

    In my opinion, these counter-demonstrations are having a real effect on these protesters. If Cindy Sheehan can’t find the intestinal fortitude to drag her body from a car and face the consequences for her traitorous yammering, we’re winning.

    These kooks have continued unanswered for too long, because they appeared to be harmless. But, because no one had the guts to face them (until this year – aside from Free Republic, I mean), we’ve tacitly approved of the rise of idiot punks like the basement-dwelling Black Bloc members.

    I remember in the early seventies when construction workers in New York City climbed down off of the high steel to confront anti-war protesters of the time. That pretty much ended protests of the Viet Nam era. Maybe we can do it again.

    We owe it to the troops in the Middle East.