Never Forget Daddy Loves You

Army Major Michael L. Mundell of Brandenburg, Kentucky was serving in Fallujah, Iraq in the 1st Brigade, 108th Division when he wrote a letter home to his 17-year-old daughter, Erica or "Eddie," on Friday, October 7, 2006:

"This war is not like the big war—there are no big sweeping maneuvers with hundreds of tanks pouring over the border and so forth. ... It's a fight of 10 man squads in the dark, of ambushes and snipers and IEDs. When I go out to fight, it's usually with less than 20 men ... And I go out to fight almost every day.

We are weary, Eddie, so very weary. I can't tell you how bone tired I am. There are times when we get back in and ... it is all I can do to drag myself from the truck and stagger up here to take off all the junk I gotta wear ... Tell all of your friends and your teachers that I said hello from Fallujah. I am doing well and our battalion is considered the best in the brigade. We are fighting the enemy and hopefully winning, though that is difficult to measure. ... Never forget that your daddy loves you more than anything and that I will be home soon."

Major Mundell was killed by an IED while on patrol in Fallujah at 1:45 PM Friday, January 5, 2007. He is survived by his wife, Audrey Cundiff Mundell, and four children, Erica Lynne, Ryan Daniel Andrew, Zachary Lewis and Thomas Dale Mundell.

More letters from our soldiers killed in action are featured in this Newsweek article, if you can stand it.

How The Insurgency Works In Iraq

A reality check from INDIANA_IRISH, a US veteran of the war in Iraq:

Most people here think that we as American soldiers are innocent of killing Iraqi civilians, or that it's the product of accident, or "over eager young soldiers" in combat for the first time. None of these answers are the case. Americans are fighting and killing Iraqi civilians almost exclusively at this point, and the actual fighting with the insurgency is the rarity, usually at the culmination of some very good intelligence field work that manages to track them down in their lairs.

It's not the fault of the American soldier, his Chain of Command, or his senior leadership that the fight has become embedded in the civilian populace, but it is rather the fault, and the purpose of the insurgency itself. The insurgency has finite numbers. The Americans, in relation to this skirmish-style of combat, do not. The Americans can be much more brash in their tactics, due to this disparity of numbers, while the insurgency must protect their numbers at all costs. And I will explain to you how they do it.

I'll just take my old stomping grounds in Baqubah, and create a fictional 10 man terror cell operating in the area to illustrate my point. Habib has his 9 insurgents, plus himself as the "sheik". In the immediate vicinity, there are over 1,000 American troops, producing round the clock patrols of the city of Baqubah and the surrounding highways. He cannot hope to do damage to so many soldiers by fighting them directly, so he plans ambushes of small convoys, roadside bombings, and suicide bombings. His only problem is the fact there are so many Americans watching these areas at such random times that he can't accomplish much without risk of losing his people.

So here's what he does... He targets the poor families with men of fighting age (and with lots of mouths to feed), and he approaches them to guage interest in the insurgency. If the people reject him, he threatens to kill the family, and fades off to the next target. If the people waiver, or express interest, he will innundate them with propoganda, and eventually make an offer of cash for doing some "small" task. This might be something like wiring a roadside bomb, or firing an RPG at an American convoy. The men of the starving family are eventually swayed to the insurgency through the fear, or the money, the latter being the most common, since there is no work left to be had in Iraq due to our devestation of the country's infrastructure.

In this case, we'll say they've been asked to fire an RPG at an American convoy for 100 US dollars, which is a small fortune to these people. So a man and his son then take the RPG, and find an area that they feel they have the best chance of success, and they set up there. This is usually a rooftop or an alleyway, and they wait for the convoy. The Americans don't dissapoint. They arrive on their convoy, which is likely a combat presence patrol designed to project force, and deter action in a sector.

They choose the vehicle they want to shoot (usually a command vehicle, which is rather stupidly identified from the pack by virtue of having multiple antennae on them for better communications)and fire. Usually, panic and lack of training account for a missed shot, but on occasion they will hit the mark. The Americans in the convoy then must identify the source of the attack, and engage the threat. In this case, they will dismount, and enter the building chosen by the insurgents for their attack. They will leapfrog through the building, clearing each room until they find the man and the son, and they will engage and kill them.

The family lost two men, and did not earn a dime. The Americans may or may not have taken casualties, but engaged and killed two "insurgents". The insurgency, however won the day without doing a thing. They protected their numbers, and through the inability of the Americans to discern who or what the threat was or wasn't, they didn't even lose a hundred bucks.

That's how the insurgency works...They use the Iraqi people to fight for them, and so we must hunt and kill them instead of those who oppose us. It's a vicious thing, but it has been very successful from their standpoint.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan.

Vietnam Vets Face Down The Moonbats

Act Now to Stop War & End Racism (ANSWER) mounted the March on the Pentagon yesterday, Saturday, March 17, a demonstration against the war in Iraq, hoping to appeal to the hippie nostalgia for the the march on the Pentagon forty years ago against the war in Vietnam. They also hope to defeat America at home, like they did in Vietnam. To drive the "Iraq is Vietnam" theme home, they planned to assemble their march next to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Wall. That was a mistake.

The malice and dishonesty of ANSWER begins with its poster. The Pentagon gear is driven by the Dollar gear, implying that the war in Iraq is driven by capitalism and the pursuit of profits. Unfortunately for that argument, the war in Iraq is a money-loser, costing more than $379 billion to date. As Sun Tzu stated 2500 years ago, no nation profits from a prolonged war. It's about the freedom, stupid. If you think war is expensive, try appeasement. Ask Neville Chamberlain how expensive that was.

The poster shows men, women, and children being tossed into the teeth of those evil Pentagon & Capitalism gears. ANSWER ignores the unpleasant fact that it was precisely the Pentagon that stopped Saddam from throwing innocent people into the plastic shredder, turning them into fish food, to maintain his reign of terror. ANSWER has never made posters condemning Saddam for feeding real people into real shredding machines. I have been to all the big anti-war marches here and I have yet to see Saddam mentioned on a protest sign. The protestors whitewash his crimes, consigning them to the memory hole. Saddam is the third rail of these anti-war protests. Mentioning him would kill the protest dead. So they don't. They prefer to ignore Saddam's real crimes while hyping Bush's imaginary ones.

The greatest irony of this "peace" march is that it was led by ANSWER Communists who promote an ideology which killed a hundred million people in the last century. If you're looking for peace, the commies will take you anywhere but there. How did the most murderous ideology in history come to lead the "peace" movement? Ignorance, that's how. Most of the clueless mopes who show up to protest have no idea who is organizing their protest party and don't care. They don't know that ANSWER is a front group for the Stalinist Worker's World Party who supports the most murderous dirtbag dictators in the world. ANSWER uses the anti-war movement as a pretext for luring a crew of useful idiots to man demonstrations to batter America, the true target of the sinister organizers of the radical Left.

If the clueless lefties really wanted peace, the first step is to visualize a peace march that is NOT led by the most murderous ideology in human history.

While the unwitting dopes of the Left flesh out ANSWER's demonstrations, the witting accomplices of ANSWER are the mainstream media, who turn a blind eye to ANSWER's Communist affiliations and leave the general public in the dark by maliciously neglecting to report on them for fear that revealing their true character would undermine the anti-war movement they support. That's how the mainstream media, which fancies itself a spokesman for the people and a watchdog of government, violates the public trust.

What ANSWER did not expect is that their choice of venue would inspire popular outrage, particularly from Vietnam vets. During the last jumbo anti-war movement in January, anarchists rushed the Capitol steps and spray-painted their nonsense on them. The police retreated from the onrushing Black Bloc mob, who perpetrated their vandalism hidden in the press of the crowd and then went on to smash the windows of a military recruiting center downtown. The police did not intervene in that incident, either. Nobody was arrested.

It did not take a crystal ball to predict what could happen if you parked thousands of radicals with utter contempt for the military next to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, veterans which the moderate liberals regard as something akin to the rampaging hordes of Genghis Khan and the far leftists regard as baby-killers. Somebody in that mob would have done something stupid to express their contempt for the Vietnam war and the people who fought it. If the police would not stop them from vandalizing war memorials, there were plenty of vets who would.

That's how the Gathering of Eagles was born. The threat against the Wall was the break in the dam holding back a great lake of resentment against the anti-war radicals who so freely slandered the military with hardly any opposition. Protesting is alien to military people and the Right in general, who find it distasteful to demand other people do for them. Conservative types get up off their butts and do it themselves. However, the fear that the war in Iraq could be lost on the home front, just like Vietnam, filled vets with fury that it could happen again. They had to put a stop to that.

Note the "I" on the armband. This is meant to be the first big counter-protest of more to come.
Rolling Thunder, a veterans group who promotes MIA-POW issues, was the most noticeable contingent of vets in their motorcycle vests.


They had a rather fierce attitude on certain issues, born of grim experience.


Real Americans love the US flag.

And Jane's not fonda vets.

Point No. 2 of the Gathering of Eagles Mission Statement says, "We are a non-violent, non-confrontational group. We look to defend, not attack. Our focus is guarding our memorials and their grounds."

The GOE meant what it said and pulled it off, but I can't honestly say that deep down in the vet's hearts they didn't want to kick some hippy protestor ass, not that there's anything wrong with that. However, they were mature enough to chuckle at their own fantasy and limit their ass-kicking to sharp rhetoric, presenting themselves to the protestors, and looking them right in the eye. That was unsettling for many protestors, who have little tolerance for being counter-protested. They just don't like it at all. It just seems unfair to them. Heh, heh, heh.

John Pickett and his wife, Linda, came all the way from Colorado. John served in Company D, 2nd of 5th Division, 1st Cavalry in Vietnam. He was on patrol in 1966, searching villages which were mysteriously empty, when his unit came under fire. He hid behind a tree until the fire died down, then stepped out to be shot five times, knocking the M79 grenade launcher out of his hands. Fortunately, he lived to tell the tale and retire from the Army after twenty-two years of service. He still wishes he had never stepped out from behind that tree, though.

This was their first protest. Says John, "We're here to defend the Wall." In John's case, the difference between being here to defend the Wall and being on the Wall is razor thin.

The Gathering of Eagles area was well-attended by patriots, but oddly neglected by the media, which preferred to cover the speakers at the ANSWER rally.


The vets objected to the relentlessly negative reporting of the war, a media strategy calculated to wear down the will of the American people.



The Gathering of Eagles area was a festival of American flags, which acted like wolfsbane to keep the lefties away.

This space next to the Wall was originally reserved by ANSWER to hold their protest, but they opted out the moment they were opposed. When the Gathering of Eagles came out of the blue to counter-protest them, ANSWER jumped to a space on the far side of the Wall, across Henry Bacon Drive, to a set of old baseball fields, out of sight of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. As the counter-protest grew, the ANSWER commies went on the defensive, shrilly denying any intent to use the wall as their political prop. Panicked, they pushed their usual two hours of speechifying at the beginning of the march within shouting range of the Wall to the end of the march over in the Pentagon parking lot.

When the Gathering of Eagles confronted them, the ANSWER commies blinked.



This Vietnam vet worked for one of the firms in the World Trade Center and lost dozens of friends in the attack.


The Gathering of Eagles rally closed by playing taps for the the guys who fought in Vietnam but never came home, for lives unlived, dreams unrealized, grief that never fades.

"Stop The War On Troop Morale." Indeed.


The vets offered helpful suggestions for the protestors to redirect them to more worthy targets of their moralistic posturing. Unfortunately, condemnation of the real aggressors falls on deaf ears in the protesting set. You can go to a dozen anti-war protests and never see a complaint about the Muslim religious war on America and the world nor outrage at Baathists for filling mass graves full of Shiites in Iraq nor condemnation of Islamic snuff videos. Don't expect to see anyone bitching about train or disco bombings, either. Such crimes lie beyond the edge of the moral map of the Left, where all evil resides in America.



Many of the protestors walking down the sidewalk of Constitution Avenue had to pass the Gathering of Eagles rally and the many veterans gathered there. The vets thoughtfully cleared the sidewalk to form a channel to guide the protestors to their rally. A gauntlet, some called it. They also offered up some random thoughts for the protestors to chew on.

The gauntlet got a giggle out of this protesting bozo, taking photos of him like he was a zoo animal.



Bozo Boy didn't much care for the gauntlet. Nobody really insulted him, because they were too busy laughing and didn't catch their breath until he was past. He seemed kinda miffed that those right-wing nuts didn't respect the fact that he was making a serious statement. It's hard to parody the protestors when they are so busy beclowning themselves. Most of the goofballs who flit to these protests just aren't serious. For them, a protest is their Mardi Gras. The counter-protestors took the fun out of it, which is the main reason why they go.


Please click on Part Two to continue...

Vets Vs Moonbats, Part 2

Leaving the sane world behind, I crossed into the parallel topsy-turvy universe of Moonbat-land, where Bush Derangement Syndrome reigned supreme. Bush is their Satan. Not Saddam. Not Bin Laden. Not Zarqawi. This totem was hoisted to mark their boundary.


Now I'm inside the hive. Note the Workers World Party banner. The WWP is the covert parent of the ANSWER organizers.

One of the many ironies of this "peace" demonstration is that the FBI considers the WWP, the shadowy mastermind of this demonstration, to be a terrorist organization. FBI Director Louis Freeh stated to the US Senate in 2001 that the Workers World Party was a "domestic terrorist group," adding, "Anarchists and extremist socialist groups — many of which, such as the Workers World Party, have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States." Is it a surprise that terrorists protest the war against terror? Why do so many liberals march to the tune of terrorists who wish to destroy America? Ignorance or treason, take your pick.

The fact is that the Stalinists who organize these "anti-war" marches are not for peace, not against war, but against America. Christopher Hitchens made the point more explicitly in his piece "Anti-War, My Foot" two years ago and called the organizers "phoney peaceniks." However, the whole scam still works with the help of the liberal media, which is sympathetic to the radical program.

Organizing a big demonstration like this costs from $50,000 to $200,000 to pay for parade permits, advertising, professionally produced and printed protest signs, chartering buses, renting the stage, generators, public address systems, Port-A-Johns, et al. The March On The Pentagon cost the ANSWER commies $80,000, according to Brian Becker, comrade-in-chief of ANSWER. Where does that money come from?

Herbert Romerstein, investigator for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and former head of the Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures at the U.S. Information Agency, "It's a reality in politics -- there's no such thing as a spontaneous demonstration. Somebody has to pay for them. Somebody has to have organization. Workers World [Party] has that. Workers World is totally subservient to the government of North Korea. What we don't know is if there's money coming in."

Romerstein points out that the WWP is awfully small to be so rich: "It's just a couple of hundred people. They maintain a weekly newspaper. They have headquarters in New York and offices around the country. They put on demonstrations. How do you pay for all that?" Good question. WWP/ANSWER put on not just the Washington march but simultaneous marches in other major cities around the US, perhaps a million bucks worth of marches.

Romerstein provides the answer for ANSWER's money: "No very radical group in the U.S. has been able to exist for very long without direct foreign support." Brian Becker, the spokes-Marxist for International A.N.S.W.E.R., member of the Secretariat of the Workers World Party, is a frequent visitor to North Korea, where he declares his support for the worker's paradise and issues communiques claiming America started the Korean War by invading the north.

The old Communist Party of the USA got its money from the Soviet Union, a million bucks a year smuggled across the Canadian border in suitcases. Wacky evil dictator Kim Jong-Il may consider a million bucks in cash to ANSWER a good deal for political agitprop to promote North Korea. Kim earns his hard cash by counterfeiting US hundred dollar bills, growing opium in North Korea for export, drug smuggling through its embassies, selling nuclear bomb technology, and selling Scud missiles. Dirty money funds ANSWER.

ANSWER refuses to answer the questions about its source of cash. It is the only major anti-war movement that does not openly declare its financial sponsors. They're hiding something. Fortunately, the Patriot Act allows the FBI to more aggressively investigate such funding, which is undoubtedly why ANSWER objects to it.


The Truthers were all over Moonbat-land like maggots in a stinking dead fish.

The Truthers insanely believe that America attacked itself on Sep 11 and THEY CAN PROVE IT, although the proof is basically lunatic ranting that never ends, constructed of half-assed factoids they've cobbled together in a spider-web of conspiracy. It's painful on the ears but apparently quite the cutting edge of thought in the radical world, whose universe is constructed of such dark and impossible conspiracies.

The one redeeming feature of the Truthers is the realization that if these kooks fall for the Truther crap, they'll fall for anything. These are the kids who lost their lunch money to classmates who said they'd introduce them to Batman. These are the guys who dug bomb shelters and bought pallets of C-rations during the Y2K scare, fearful that when the computer dates clicked over to 2000 ALL HELL WOULD BREAK LOOSE! These are the guys who own the title to the Brooklyn Bridge. Their lives must be a hell of their own invention.

One of many commies peddling socialist rags. This paper wants Mumia, the cop-killer, to be set free, presumably because there are a lot of cops left to shoot.

Get your Marxist propaganda here! Of course, the Staff here at Conservative Propaganda views competing propaganda with elitist disdain. Our propaganda is so much better than theirs and half the price! We stack it deeper and sell it cheaper!

These particular idiots are the Internationalist Group who "fights for international socialist revolution, the conquest of power by the working class, led by its Leninist party, championing the cause of all the oppressed. At a time when the capitalist rulers trumpet the supposed “death of communism,” we say that communism lives in the struggles of the working class and the program of its vanguard."

There were a lot of people at the ANSWER rally who were full of shit. By that, of course, I mean people other than me.

The "Party For Socialism & Liberation" pitched their tent at the rally. However, my reading of history is that when it comes to socialism and liberation, it's usually one or the other. They're mutually exclusive.


After the malign nonsense of the Truthers and Marxists, it was almost refreshing to see just plain old goofy hippie pacifism. It cleansed the palate. Wave your freak flag high and proud, buddy, and sing, "By the time we got to Woodstock ...."



The media claims that 30,000 protestors showed up for the rally, which was clearly false. This is ANSWER's rally space which I calculate would hold a maximum of 26,000 people if packed into three foot square boxes. As you can see, they could only fill up one end of it with their crowd. Usually, ANSWER can draw about 30,000 to 50,000 and then claims half a million. Just an eyeball estimate places their crowd at a fraction of the claimed 30,000. The crowd was so thin that ANSWER could only inflate their estimate by three or four times instead of the usual ten.




One of the main themes of the demonstration was to free the Cuban Five, who are Cuban spies caught in Miami. One of them infiltrated the Brothers to the Rescue group, Cuban expatriates who flew covert missions to Cuba in civilian aircraft to rescue Cubans seeking to flee to America. He told the Cuban government when they were coming. Cuban MiGs shot down two of the light planes, killing four people. The other four spies were caught transmiting two thousand pages of information they got from American military bases back to Cuba. All five of them are guilty as hell and in prison where they belong.

Cuba is mounting a disinformation campaign to free its spies, with the help of ANSWER. Fidel is probably tossing them some money to fund their protest. Those professionally-done banners and slick posters cost bucks. I doubt that one protestor in a thousand could tell you who the Cuban Five were.



American flags were in short supply in Moonbat-land, but every other flag could be found in abundance. Flying above are the flags of Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Iraq again.


The LaRouchies were there, happy to demonize their political opponents. It's Cheney, this time. If you disagree with them, you could be next.

Here in plain language is the main message of the demonstration: Cut off all money for the war and pull the troops out unconditionally. Simply put, unconditional surrender. Nobody, not even the radicals, believe that withdrawing our troops in Iraq will lead to peace. Everybody knows that our GIs are the thin green line in Iraq holding off the Baathist mass-murderers and the jihadi head-cutters. If they leave, Iraq will become a hell on Earth for ordinary Iraqis, a paradise for the insurgents. Nothing so transparently signals the demonstration's desire for America to lose and take innocent Iraqis down with it. They want the insurgents to win.

This buffoon was standing near the Lincoln Memorial, an example of how the radical extremists in this march supported the troops, as they smarmily claimed. It seems unlikely that any soldier would appreciate mocking the wounded. What is especially despicable here is this guy paraded out past real wounded soldiers, some in wheelchairs, who were gathered around the Lincoln Memorial to counter-protest. Can you imagine what some guy who survived an IED but lost his buddies would think when he saw this grotesque jackass? In your face, GI.

Please click on Part 3 to continue ...

Vets Vs Moonbats, Part 3

The protesters clustered at the side of the Lincoln Memorial to begin their march to the Pentagon, Palestinian flag flying. One counter-protestor told me he saw the police stop a young kid in front of the Memorial to divest him of several spray paint cans. One of the Black Bloc anarchist groups planned to meet there, according to their announcements on the Internet. Apparently, the fears of vandalism by the radicals was well-founded.



The police did a pretty good job of herding the protestors.

Planning a big demonstration like this has its problems. When the ANSWER commies began dickering with the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) for access to a hundred yards of Route 27 on the march route that fell under its jurisdiction, they were outraged to find that VDOT demanded that they agree in writing to pay an unspecified amount of user fees that could have cost tens of thousands of bucks, hire an engineering firm to produce a traffic control plan, and take out a one million dollar insurance policy lest somebody slip on that hundred yards of asphalt.

ANSWER had its lawyers at the Partnership For Civil Justice send a whiny letter to the Virginia Attorney General complaining that VDOT had happily helped pro-war "Freedom Walks" on the same patch of road in 2005 and 2006. Their lawyers complained of VDOT's response when ANSWER complained of these arbitrary conditions to march: "When advised that this process was plainly in violation of the First Ammendment of the U.S. Constitution, VDOT representatives actually expressed uncertainty that the Constitution applies in Virginia."

OK, so ANSWER has a point that they have a Constitutional right to spew their rhetoric and VDOT is undoubtedly standing on slippery legal ground. Still, I have to snicker to read how VDOT bureaucrats are jacking with the ANSWER commies' heads. Those genius VDOT bureaucrats have found a way to make gubmint red tape and obfuscation work FOR us instead of against us. Thank you, VDOT, thank you so much for giving us a good return on our tax dollars. You did everything but ask ANSWER for an environmental impact study and demand to know if the march would harm any snail darters in the Potomac River. Maybe next time.


On the other side of traffic circle stood a solid wall of Vietnam vets, other vets, and patriots. It's the first time a big anti-war protest has been substantially counter-protested and the protestors didn't like it one bit. They wanted a monopoly on protest.



The cops kept the protestors apart from the vets, too far outside the range of even the most practiced spitter to hit a uniform. That was a very wise precaution. Very wise, indeed. The police were all on the protestor side of the street, with few on the vets side of the street. It's a tacit admission of who was more likely to cause trouble. The vets know how to take orders and restrain themselves. The protestors don't.


Nevertheless, some patriots took defensive measures.


The protestors kept up a steady stream of abuse at the vets. One young kid, about 15, next to me started yelling "YOU IGNORANT REDNECKS" at the vets. "That's racist," I told him. "No, it isn't," he said. "What do you think a redneck is," I asked. "A redneck is an ignorant, stupid person," he said. "That's like calling blacks ignorant or stupid," I told him. "Whatever," he said.



The vets were FOR things, the protestors were AGAINST things. Some psychologist could turn a buck writing a study about the difference between the two mindsets, though I could tell him which one is healthier and requires more intellectual capital.



The protestors vehemently objected to the patriots desire to win the war or lose the jihad.

Some protestors came dressed as Death, which was oddly appropriate, for if they were able to convince Congress to withdraw our troops, Iraq would become Death's playground. Death was what they were promoting, not only in Iraq, but eventually here at home when an insurgent victory in Iraq would encourage the jihadis to strike us, confident that they could outlast us.

Counter-protest babes. While I freely admit my bias towards lusty, red-blooded, patriotic babes, I still think our protest babes out-babed their protest babes.

After the police passed on horseback, the vets yelled, "Hey, LOOK! Here's some Cindy Sheehan!" The protestors didn't think that was funny at all.

The anarchists paraded their devil god across the Arlington Memorial Bridge; the god of the insurgency, of beheadings, of chaos and defeat. Hail Satan! Let Us March For Your Victory!

History may well record this march some day as akin to the infamous Ku Klux Klan march down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1928.

The only point where the protestors and vets collided came at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, where they closed to arm's distance and shouted at the vets, "WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB!?" "The enemy!" cried the patriots. A protestor with an African accent shouted that he was ashamed of the vets, ASHAMED! Medea Benjamin of Code Pink began singing, "All we are saying, Is give peace a chance." Unfortunately for Medea, we gave peace eighteen chances in Iraq in the form of UN resolutions and Saddam didn't go for any of them. Peace offerings only appease the peaceable; it provokes aggressors who see them as weakness. The confrontation went on for about five minutes until the police scrambled some motorcycles between the two sides and moved the protestors on.

Before the march started, some of the vets found a stash of ANSWER propaganda, six boxes of it, stashed under a tall evergreen tree next to the bridge. They pissed on it, good veteran pee made in America by Americans. ANSWER posted a guard on it after the fact. Quite frankly, I lost my confidence in the ANSWER commies competence to rule the world when they can't even keep their propaganda dry.


What Would The Giant Puppets Do? That's the question the lefties ask themselves when considering the great issues of the day. There is no greater moral authority in the protest world than the giant puppet. If the giant puppets are against war, well, ya gotta listen and take it seriously. However, there weren't quite enough giant puppets to convince me the radicals were right. There were maybe half a dozen puppets, tops. A dozen giant puppets is my tipping point, where I begin to really sit down and think: Do I want to thwart the will of the puppets? Until ANSWER produces more puppets, I'm sticking with Bush.



Another irony of the "peace" march is the ubiquitous image of Che Guevara, Fidel's enforcer, who tortured and executed members of the guerrilla band who fell afoul of of Fidel. After the Communist victory in Cuba, Che took command of a prison where he set to executing hundreds, maybe thousands, of enemies on his personal whim, establishing the Cuban system of political repression. Che is a hero to the "peace" marchers.

"Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!" Che Guevara's Peace Plan, "Motorcycle Diaries"



Some of the protest chimps got antsy and started climbing trees because, well, they were there. Nobody brought any bananas to lure them back down.


As Reagan said, the problem with liberals is that they know so much that isn't true. The Left has a different script for the war in Iraq, a script for defeat, just like Vietnam. It's rotten and wrong and the Left has handcuffed itself to this doomsday scenario. They want to lose out of perversity while we want to win out of patriotism and the desire to lift up the world into freedom. The Left isn't up to that kind of heavy lifting.


The USMLO is the U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization. If you can tell me why the liberal media will never show you a photo of these flags nor a report of the organization toting them, you win a cookie. We all know why, don't we? Well, that's a free cookie for you. Mmmm. Cookies.



This couple had the novel idea of demonstrating the alternative to war but, really, nobody wants to see us middle-aged farts making love in public. Even the protestors wanted these folks to get a room.


I wouldn't want to give the false impression that none of the protestors flew American flags, but in a way distinctly different from the vets.



Thank goodness for telephoto lenses. I wanted to keep at least twenty feet of separation from this guy. I had to boil that lens when I got home.

Finally, the march reaches the promised land of the Pentagon's south parking lot.

Please click on Part 4 to continue ...