Indoctrinate U

Tantor made his way last night to the Terrace Theater of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to see the worldwide premiere of Evan Maloney's new documentary, "Indoctrinate U." At least four hundred like-minded souls came to see Evan's fine product, many of them pretty young women in little cocktail dresses, which gladdened the heart of the curmudgeonly Tantor. From there, it just got better.

The documentary is about the near monopoly the Left enjoys on US college campuses and the ridiculously biased environment they have produced. Evan started this project with no experience in filmmaking but perservered to make a short film called "Brainwashing 101," followed by "Brainwashing 201." He went on to convince Thor Halvorssen of the Moving Picture Institute to fund and support a longer film. Evan took about four years to shoot a hundred hours of film at various campuses which he edited down to about ninety minutes of comedy.

It's all about the assault on the First Ammendment being made by radical lefty professors and administrators on those in the minority on campus, mainly Christians and conservatives. The lefty establishment is heavy-handed on dissenters. There were no smiles when a protest of affirmative action on campuses sold cupcakes to passersby for different prices based on the cusomter's race. On some campuses, the races are separated in the name of diversity from orientation, through separate housing, and on to separate graduation ceremonies. Some colleges enforce speech codes that prohibit anything that could lead to a loss of self-esteem. One college goes so far as to outlaw the use of the terms "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" as gender-specific and therefore discriminatory.

College faculties are about three-quarters liberal, with liberals concentrating in the fuzzy-wuzzy humanities while growing scarcer in the engineering departments. One professor opined that what faculty members really want is for students to validate their pathetic life experience.

College professors and administrators are shown to be comically anti-American. One student comments that there are plenty of why-America-is-bad courses but no why-America-is-good courses. After the Sep 11 attacks, some colleges banned the display of the US flag on their campuses lest it offend foreign students. A Kuwaiti student, Ahmad Al-Qloushi, who wrote a pro-American essay was called into his professor's office, berated for defending America, and told to go seek psychological counseling.

Liberal faculty can be ruthless in dealing with conservative faculty. When a professor at Cal Poly was found to be conservative, she was harassed and eventually forced out as head of the psychology department. Some professors relate being told they would have never been hired had it been known they weren't liberal. The liberal professoriate prefers ideological conformity, which is antithetical to the idea of a university. Through this process universities are converted from centers of learning to centers of indoctrination.

There were too many funny moments in this documentary to tell. It was amusing to see Evan wander around campuses asking for directions to the men's center or asking about men's studies programs, questions which aren't going to make you any friends at the Women's Center on campus. Colleges seem to be awfully quick to call the police on filmmakers asking questions. In this regard, college administrators acted more like bank robbers who didn't want to be filmed than decent people with nothing to hide.

The entire documentary paints a rather funny but depressing portrait of political correctness run amok on our campuses. I can only hope that today's students followed my own strategy in defeating indoctrination by radical leftist professors: waiting until the last night before the test to read all my assignments and not paying attention in class. It worked for me.

After the film was shown, Evan complained that the The New York Times gave a negative review of "Indoctrinate U" while citing cases that were not in the film. In one case that actually was in the film, a conservative student paper was shut down by Vassar for criticizing the construction of special student centers for minorities and gays. The New York Times argued that free speech was respected because the paper was allowed to publish again after a year. Evan emailed the Times, asking them if they would hold that free speech was respected if the government had shut down the Times for a year after they revealed how the US was investigating terrorist financing. The Times replied he should be lucky he was mentioned in the Times.

"Indoctrinate U" was well worth watching, but finding a way to watch it will not be easy. They're happy to show it anywhere they can get 500 or more people to pay to watch it. Otherwise, you have to wait for it to come out on DVD, which will take another fourteen weeks. Maybe you can catch it on Netflix then.

Achmed The Dead Terrorist

I suppose the inevitable response to the Muslim war of terror on the world would be suicide bomber humor. After all, what's funnier than a train bombing? Comedian Jeff Dunham introduces us to Achmed, the dead suicide bomber, and asks him what was the last thing that went through his mind when he detonated himself. "My ass," says Achmed. You can watch the video here.

Saudi Arabia Delenda Est

Investor's Business Daily editorializes on the question, "Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe?" Well, folks, this is a no-brainer: Foe.

When Undersecretary Stuart Levey, the US Treasury's top anti-terror official, was asked how many people named by the US or the United Nations as a financier of terror have been prosecuted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Levey replied, "There have not been any."

And it's not like the Saudis don't know who the financiers are. For example, Yasin al-Qadi is a wealthy Saudi businessman who the U.S. and U.N. both blacklisted as a money man for Al Qaeda merely a month after the Sep 11 attacks. He happily roams about his Saudi sanctuary unmolested.

The same goes for a Saudi who was running the Portland, Oregon branch of the Al-Haramain Foundation, a Muslim charity which, surprise, surprise, was an Al Qaeda front. He was passing bucks on to Al Qaeda jihadis in Chechnya. He scampered back to Saudi Arabia, one step ahead of the law, where he was given a job working for the city of Riyadh.

OK, it's quiz time, ladies and gentleman. Here's the question:

What happenned to the 53 Saudi terrorist scumbags we have released to Saudi Arabia from Gitmo?:

A) The Saudis immediately executed them upon arrival for terrorism.
B) The Saudis sentenced them to long terms of prison for promulgating their religion by violence.
C) The Saudis paroled them on condition they cooperate with the police in telling everything they knew about the terror cells.
D) They went scot free the moment they landed back in Saudi Arabia. Yippee!

Well, if you guessed D, you may already be a winner. Of course, they went free. Terrorists are heroes in Saudi Arabia. There's nothing finer for Wahhabis than slaughtering infidels in the dar al harb. And really, Saudi Arabia was one of the main sources of the $500,000 that funded the Sep 11 attacks. The Saudis aren't going to cough up the princes who bought the box-cutters for the suicide skyjackers of September 11.

Needless to say, we should not grant sanctuary in Saudi Arabia to the Saudi scum who write the checks for Osama Bin Laden to annihilate American families flying to Disneyland. We should deliver their terror back to them with interest. What's the point of having a CIA if we can't use it to assassinate Saudi terror moneymen? Nor should we allow the Wahhabis to remain unmolested in their homes as they seek to kill us in our homes.

We will never be safe so long as Saudi Arabia exists, with the contemptible Saudi princes feeding petrodollars to the Wahhabi madmen to do their worst. The Saudis have spent more than $70 billion to spread their death cult around the world from 1975 to 2002, almost three billion per year. By comparison, the Soviet Union at its peak in the 1970s only spent a billion per year on propaganda to spread their point of view. Some of those Saudi billions went to support the propagation of terror cells. Where ever Wahhabis plant a mosque, terrorists follow in the night.

It's time we took their jihad back to them. They should stop feeling safe in Saudi Arabia. America should not allow Saudi Arabia to be an untouchable haven for terrorists bent on murdering Americans.

Ospreys Migrate To Iraq

Ten new MV-22 "Osprey" tilt-rotors quietly departed the Marine Air Station at New River, North Carolina last week for the amphibious assault ship U.S.S. Wasp, a small aircraft carrier. There they joined the rest of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, "The Thunder Chickens," enroute to Al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq for seven months of combat operations in the Anbar province. The squadron is deploying not quite one hundred members, of whom twenty-eight are pilots, including two women. They've been training for a year to go.

My guess is that by the end of the year, some insurgents are going to have some surprise visitors drop in on them unexpectedly.

Weaving The Tangled Web

Adnan Klaric, 32, was sick, sick of his wife, Sana, so he decided to search for love on the Internet under the pseudonym "Prince of Joy." Sana, 27, was equally sick of Adnan and secretly sought relief on the Internet as well. The Bosnian couple both found love matches on the net who were also in loveless and painful marriages. Said Sana, "I was suddenly in love. It was amazing, we seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriages."

By a weird coincidence, they both decided to secretly meet their new loves at the same time and place. Unfortunately, when the "Prince of Joy" met his Internet love, "Sweetie," it turned out to be his wife, Sana. Said Sana, "I felt so betrayed." Adnan was equally outraged, "I still find it hard to believe that Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years."

Both accuse each other of being unfaithful, albeit with each other, and are divorcing, probably so they can marry each other.

The New Marxists

From the indispensable "City Journal," Theodore Dalyrimple writes in "Islam, the Marxism of Our Time: Some troubling signs in Europe":

"Two of the men that the German police arrested in early September for plotting a series of huge explosions in the country were young German converts to Islam. It is impossible to know how many such German converts there are, but it is thought to run into tens of thousands, principally men; in the nature of things, it is also uncertain how many of them are attracted to extremism, but few people are so attracted by moderation that they are converted by it.

"The man believed to be the leader of the little group, Fritz G., the son of a doctor and an engineer, was himself a student of ngineering, of mediocre attainment. He grew up in Ulm, where a quarter of the population is now Muslim, and at the time of his parents’ divorce, when he was 15, he began to frequent the Islamic Information Center of Ulm, and also the comically named Multikultihaus in the neighboring town of Neu-Ulm, where young men of jihadist views, including Mohammed Atta, had long congregated.

In 2004, he was spotted at the Ulm Islamic center, selling a journal called Think in the Islamic Way. In December of that year, the police found propaganda in favor of Osama bin Laden in his car. In 2006, he went to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

"His fellow conspirator, Daniel S., came from a well-off family and converted early in life to radical Islam. He traveled to Egypt to learn Arabic, and then returned to Germany, where he sometimes irritated his neighbors by praying loudly in Arabic three times a day.

"All this suggests that Islam is fast becoming the Marxism of our times. Had Fritz G. and Daniel S. grown up a generation earlier, they would have become members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang rather than Islamic extremists. The dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems, has given way before the establishment of the Caliphate as the transcendent answer to some German youths’ personal angst.

"This is good news indeed for Islamists, but not so good for the rest of us."

Iran Declares War On Dogs

The mad mullahs of Tehran have launched a new campaign against "un-Islamic behavior" by targeting Iranians out walking their dogs. The dogs are arrested and thrown in a newly built dog prison. The good news is that the dogs are often let out on bail after a couple days. Good doggy!

An Iranian woman who called herself Najda told Radio Farda that she was bringing her dog home from surgery at the vet when the police arrested the pooch and gave her a good reprimand:

"We want to get rid of western culture. You live in an Islamic country, it's not right to have dogs. Are you not Islamic? Why does your family allow you to own a dog? ... They insulted me, they even told me they hope my dog will die. There was nothing I could do but cry. ... One day it's dogs, tomorrow they have to catch birds. The police themselves must be laughing at us."

Yet another young woman had her puppy detained for 48 hours for "walking in public" and then released on bail. Evidently, they are not so hard on juvenile canine offenders.

The Muslim geniuses who run Iran see keeping dogs as pets as "morally depraved". From the holy city of Qom, the font of cutting edge Shia thought, an ayatollah singled out "short-legged dogs" as particularly bad. It's all part of the Big Effort by Iran to nip the corrupting influence of western popular culture it calls "Westoxification." When you read about the Iranian crackdown on pets, you just can't help but think that this demonstrates the kind of maturity, sophistication, rationality, and tolerance you'd like to see in a nation armed with nuclear weapons. What could go wrong?

Of course, any time you hear of something Really Stupid in the Muslim world, one naturally wonders, "How can the Saudis out-stupid this?" Say no more, Wahhabi nutjob fans. The wacky Wahhabis have done their hated Shiite enemy in Iran one better by outlawing dogs and cats, too, thus proving who are the best Muslims of all! What can Iran do now but raise the ante and throw fish and hamsters in the pokey? You can almost see the goldfish behind bars already.

Aleetha al-Jihani, a typically thickskulled Saudi, wrote a letter to the editor of the Al-Madina newspaper:

"One bad habit spreading among our youths is the acquisition of dogs and showing them off in the streets and malls. ... There's no doubt that such a matter makes one shudder. What's the point of dragging a dog behind you? This is blind emulation of the infidels."

Well said, al-Jihani! You don't want to blindly emulate us infidels by playing with dogs or cats or turning on the air conditioning or putting ice in your drink from the fridge or driving cars or getting surgery or any of those other damned things that we accursed infidels do. It's time you gave all that up and went back to the goatskin tent herding animals in the desert. Be sure to take your Koran with you.

Gathering Of Eagles III, Part 1

The Gathering of Eagles, a pro-military/pro-American group, stole a march on ANSWER when they discovered that the commies planned a big anti-war march in Washington, DC at noon of September 15th by organizing a counter-protest that morning called "Gathering of Eagles (GOE) III." GOE III kick-started the opposition at 9 AM on the National Mall next to the Hirshhorn Museum of contemporary art.


The first GOE counter-protested the startled protestors of ANSWER when they announced they were going to start their "March on the Pentagon" last March next to the Vietnam War Memorial. That did not sit well with the Vietnam vets, or any vets, or any reasonable American. That's what got GOE started.

Support Victory. It's just that simple. We won the conventional war in Iraq in five weeks. Winning the unconventional war will take ten years. It's hard to win a guerrilla war fast but it's easy to lose it fast. The new decentralized strategy of fighting the insurgents implemented by General Petraeus is slowly working. We should let it play out.

Military history tells us that most guerrillas lose against a standing army. A guerrilla strategy is a strategy of weakness. Their defeat on the battlefield is inevitable. The best guerrilla country is mountainous, like Yugoslavia. Iraq is flat as pool table, terrible country for guerrillas. Even worse, Iraq's insurgents are urban guerrillas, the most vulnerable of all guerrillas. It's just a matter of time and effort before guerrillas hiding in a city are rounded up. They're doomed.

Military history also tells us that the only way guerrillas can win is to attack the enemy politically on his home front, wearing down the will to win through propaganda. That's the way the North Vietnamese won the Vietnam war. It's how Fidel conquered Cuba. It's the only hope for the remnants of the Baathist tyranny and Al Qaed jihadis in Iraqi. In that sense, ANSWER is the Iraqi insurgency's greatest hope along with defeatist Democrats in Congress, their liberal supporters, and, of course, the liberal media.

GOE III was a festival of American flags, a sight which gladdens the heart of real Americans.

The nice people there weren't content to just fly the Flag. They WERE the Flag.


Kristinn Taylor, the D.C. Coordinator of the Gathering of Eagles, kicks off GOE III. Kristinn has done some fine work keeping the counter-protest going against the Code Pink protest of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Pinkomaniacs have been protesting the war wounded at the gates of the hospital for over two years now every Friday night from 7 to 9 PM. Kristinn and the Freepers (Free Republic) have been in a protest war of attrition there which they have slowly been winning, beating down the protest from a high of about 150 protestors to the last half dozen die hards. Good on ya, Kristinn!

GOE III started with the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, and a prayer. That's something you'll never see at an ANSWER rally.

While the talkers talked, the Marines had their back behind the stage.


If you want to get a good look at the heart of America, it was on display at GOE III. These are the people who raise their kids to respect the military and consider it their duty to enlist.


A Vietnam combat vet and his wife.


A WWII vet.



A protest babe. Yeah, I can imagine it. Visualize Victory.

Larry Bailey, Chairman of the Gathering of Eagles, retired as a captain (the O-6 kind, equivalent to an Army colonel) in the US Navy after twenty-seven years as a Navy SEAL, including comand of the Naval Special Warfare Center (NSWC), the SEAL (Sea, Air Land) school in Coronado, California. You can't get more impressive military credentials than that short of flying fighters for the Air Force. The stories he could tell. Oh, wait a minute, he told some of them here. Mr. Bailey told me:

"We were founded for one reason and one reason only: To make sure that the Left does not have a free pass to work their will on the national policy like they did in the 1960s and 1970s. Never again. They shall not pass. Anytime they want to go somewhere they're going to find Eagles standing in their path."

A Guardian Angel knows which side to support.

George Samek of Shallotte, NC takes pride in defeating Cindy Sheehan at Bryant Park in Charlotte, NC during her protest tour. He organized a counter-protest and told her Code Pink advance woman what they had planned. That was enough to stop Cindy cold in her tracks. Even with fourteen policeman to guarantee order, she wouldn't step out of her car.

Many of the celebrity protestors lack the courage of their convictions. They want the rush of adulation and attention but they don't want the responsibility of defending their positions. Very often, a simple counter-protest will throw them off. From direct observation of about three years of protests, I can tell you that the one thing protestors hate most is being protested. It seems wildly unfair to them and outrageous. They think free speech is groovy when they're the ones pitching verbal tarballs but they don't dig it at all when they're catching them. They want a monopoly on the public forum and all dissent from their position suppressed.

Mr. Samek went on to counter-protest the protestors at the West Point and Coast Guard Academy graduations this year where President Bush spoke.

Keep up that good work, George Samek. You're on the side of the angels.

Note the Vietnamese-American guy on the right whose sign thanks America for saving his family. My guess is that there were about a thousand people at GOE III.


This is what the face of real support for the troops looks like.

The crowd overwhelmingly wanted Petraeus to keep winning the war, for the military to bring Iraq to a positive end.


I'm a believer in a crowd of believers.



GOE's attempt to reach out and dialogue with Code Pink.



Can't we all just get along? Come to think of it, maybe not. The Left wants us to abandon Iraq and let it turn into a perfect hell, a Hobbesian world of all against all, a bloody anarchy of violence. Perhaps they should go join their vision of the future, should it come true.


Melanie Morgan, that rarest of birds, a conservative talk radio host from San Francisco, is chairman of Move America Forward, who led a caravan of supporters cross-country to Washington while harassed by the Left.

Speaking of fabulous conservative journalists, I met Michelle Malkin when I was wandering by the press stand. Her baseball cap did a pretty good job of disguising her if I hadn't seen her a hundred times on TV and could recognize her by the line of her jaw. Michelle looks ten feet tall on the tube but in person she's a tiny elfin woman who shakes your hand with a petite hand light as air. I was so distracted I forgot to take a picture of her. Now I feel like a failure as a blogger, letting the moment slip by without recording it. I don't know why you people read me.

The Eagles don't do surrender. And they don't think terrorists are freedom fighters.

Getting the priorities straight.

How this psycho killer Che became the idol of the Left is beyond me. When Che executed his first victim, a fellow revolutionary, he wrote a letter home to his pappa in Argentina telling him how much he liked killing people. What a sick bastard he was.



Andrius Vaitekunas of Warrington, VA takes flag-waving to a whole new level. Andrius, I commend you on your proud display of patriotism, but, dude, you're scaring me a little.



What a good point. Isn't it odd how the most venomous criticism of the US as a facist tyranny is delivered on its own soil without retribution, eliciting only yawns from the government, while the true tyrannies in Iran and Syria, oddly enough, attract no criticism and even support from the Left? These are tyrannies which crush critics like bugs. What an irony it is that maintaining a right to free speech provokes the most criticism, simply because irresponsible criticism carries no cost as long as it is directed at a free nation.



A couple very nice ladies wandered by on their way to the ANSWER protest and stopped in surprise to find a counter-protest. Both claimed to have sons in the military. They held up their signs for a few minutes but nobody really bugged them. After a bit, they walked on.

The answer to whether we are any safer six years after September 11 seems painfully obvious on the National Mall where the Capitol was one of the main targets of the suicide skyjackers. For the Muslim fanatics, it is the center of blasphemy where infidels write man-made laws and dare to place them above the law of Allah as laid down in the Koran. If the Capitol is not in smoking ruins and you do not see crowds running for their lives in a panic on the Mall, then, yes, America is a safer place. We have not avoided follow-on attacks because the jihadis have given up trying to do us evil. They fail in their plots because we have returned their jihad to them.

Something to remember is that many of the people on the opposing side of this war debate are good, well-meaning, honest people who are simply wrong, but whose differences with us are best gently treated.

That reminds me, I wonder what's happenning over in Moonbat Land? I think I'll walk over to Lafayette Park and see what ANSWER is up to.

Please follow along by clicking on "Code Pink, Part 2."

Code Pink Protest, Part 2

Walking up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House, I came across a Code Pink rally of about a hundred people on Freedom Plaza.

There was a folk singer in Birkenstocks playing the guitar and singing:
"Gonna make peace around the world, down by the riverside, down by riverside
Ain't gonna study war no more, Ain't gonna study war no more, Ain't gonna study war no more."

What Code Pink had done was build a time machine right there on Freedom Plaza to transport me back to the '60s.

And while the singer sang, all the little Pinkies did their little Pinkie dance. They are a festive people.

Some were dressed up like it was Mardi Gras.

Others were dressed like they were going to the Code Pink Senior High Prom.

Their goal was supposedly peace but none of the things they demanded would bring that about. If Code Pink got its wish that the US immediately withdrew from Iraq, the Baathist thugs and jihadi headcutters would take over and institute a reign of terror. Defeating the insurgents and implementing a working democracy is Iraq's best hope for a lasting peace.

They didn't think much of Bush, of course, but they've cooked their reasons for hating him.

However, Bush was not the primary object of their fury but rather Congressman Nancy Pelosi, Democrat and Speaker of the House of Representatives, whom they found insufficiently supportive of their cause. One speaker whined that when they went to picket her house, even THAT did not win her over. Instead of caving in to their demands, Pelosi yelled at them, "Get away from my house, you nut!" When I was done laughing, I came away with a curious new sympathy for Pelosi. The irony here is that while Code Pink is harassing Pelosi for not being radical enough, another far left group crashed a Code Pink event and planted a pie in the face of Medea Benjamin, Code Pink leader, for not being even more radical. It's a dog-eat-dog world on the Left.

For a few precarious seconds, Tantor was lured to the Dark Side, yet he regained his focus and pressed on in his mission.

Tantor's Caption:

"I can't believe my girlfriend made me wear this @$#% pink tiara. I feel like such an idiot. There better be some sex in this for me before this day is done."

When I tapped Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, on the shoulder I was surprised she didn't flinch, what with all the baked goods thrown her way. However, she was in her Happy Place and I had not come bearing hostile pies but with a request for an interview, explaining that I was a conservative blogger. When I placed my "Conservative Propaganda" business card in her hand, she looked down at it like I had placed a little rat turd in her palm. Nevertheless, she agreed to it after she did a few things. A Code Pink protest needs constant tending, like a pot on the stove that requires stirring now and then.

After a few minutes Medea came over, though she came like she was going to the dentist.

Tantor: "Why are you here?"

Medea: "I'm here because we have been working now for four and a half years. First, we tried to stop this war from the beginning and now we are trying to stop it now. We want to bring the troops home. We want to live in peace with our neighbors and we feel that we have to put the pressure on the Democrats and the Republicans to listen to the voice of the people and end the occupation and don't bomb the next country like Iran."

Tantor: "Why are you having a separate demonstration from the one ANSWER is giving in Lafayette Park?"

Medea: "It's not a separate demonstration. It's actually a pre-march. We do this at all the marches. We value ourselves predominantly as women but not exclusively to come together and get energized and then join the other march."

Tantor: "Then you're cooperating with ANSWER in running this demonstration?"

Medea: "Yes, we're not running it but we're invited like everyone is to join the ... and I'll be one of those speakers. I have a two minute time slot. So, yes, we're cooperating but it's their demonstration."

Tantor: "Now, the Gathering of Eagles is having their protest down the street, down Pennsylvania Avenue, in front of the Capitol. What do you think of that?"

Medea: "I think that it's good that people who are passionate about their views come out and try to make their views known, as long as it's all done in a peaceful way. I think it's good."

Tantor: "Code Pink started a protest outside of Walter Reed hospital that's gone on over two years. Why did you do that?"

Medea: "First of all, it's not a protest. It's a vigil. And second of all, it wasn't started by Code Pink. Code Pink participated but it was started by Veterans For Peace. We thought that from the beginning it was always a way to say, remember the wounded. Support them. Give money to the veteran's hospitals. We knew that Walter Reed was horrible before it broke in the Washington Post as a national story and our message was fund the veterans, not the war."

Tantor: "Back on April 20, Gael Murphy and another Code Pink person came out to Walter Reed with a Canadian TV crew. The Code Pink person with her, not Gael Murphy, said that the troops were the terrorists. Would you like to clarify that?"

Medea: "I think you'd have to ask the person who said that."

Tantor: "So she doesn't speak for Code Pink?"

Medea: "No, she speaks for herself. We encourage people to be their own spokespeople. They're responsible for their own statements, not us."

Tantor: "Alright, so you don't back that statement?"

Medea: "I wouldn't say that."

Tantor: "You don't support that statement?"

Medea: "No, I don't."

Tantor: "Code Pink sent 60,000 dollars in cash and supplies to Fallujah. Why didn't you give that to the wounded soldiers in Walter Reed?"

Medea: "It's been sent to refugee women and children. That money can go a long way for people who have absolutely nothing. It would be not very well used at a place like Walter Reed which has many more millions of dollars. We're supporting women and children who have no homes, who have no food, no nothing. And I'm proud that we sent it."

Tantor: "But Fallujah was a terrorist haven."

Medea: "That doesn't mean that women and children are terrorists. Come on. They're women and children. "

Tantor: "How do you know it just went to women and children?"

Medea: "It's a city of 350,000 people. We don't think 350,000 people are terrorists. It's their own home. And their homes were destroyed and we feel terrible about it. I have to go. Thank you."

Tantor: "Thank you, Medea."

I disagree with Medea Benjamin, of course. Walter Reed is not horrible nor even close. It's quite a good hospital, even plush in some spots. There was one building outside the base fence that Walter Reed acquired which was badly maintained and in poor condition. That was an anomaly, which Benjamin is overgeneralizing to the entire hospital to make political propaganda.

Likewise, Benjamin claimed that the veterans were being shorted on funding yet Code Pink makes its donations to Fallujah, the biggest terrorist town in Iraq. Code Pink should have put its money where its mouth was. You can't argue that the wounded troops are being shorted on funds while simultaneously arguing that Walter Reed has so many millions of dollars that donations would not be well spent there.

My opinion of Medea Benjamin improved a little after I talked to her. I thought that she might be an evil Marxist from reports in the media but my sense of her in person was more that she was careless and naive in her own way. She really liked the idea of sending money to dispossessed women and children in Iraq and that is the story she really wants to be true. She doesn't want to countenance that story could be false. However, in practice, Iraqi women and children answer to the men who will take whatever possessions they acquire and do with them what they will. Certainly, some of the money Code Pink dropped in Fallujah was shot back at our troops.

Code Pink's support of the protest of Walter Reed is a blunder. Calling it a vigil doesn't fool anyone. I've been there when the protestors were singing songs protesting baby killing by soldiers, which is a witless slander. That was no pro-soldier protest. When wounded soldiers come out from the hospital to ask why they are being protested, the protestors literally turn their backs on them and refuse to talk to them. When you tell a reasonable liberal that Walter Reed is being protested, they wince. By supporting this ill-considered protest, Code Pink has been obtuse and insensitive about the wounded in Walter Reed and their families when they are most vulnerable. They should cut their losses and withdraw all support for it. There are plenty of places to protest in DC. Pick another.

Still, I was impressed that Medea Benjamin would do an interview with a hostile blogger she could have easily dodged. She gets credit from me for being polite and for being an honest radical. I expected her to be strident. She was far better mannered than I have come to expect from the far Left.

From what I saw of this demonstration, Code Pink is not really a serious organization. They seem to be a social group, a sorority. Demonstrations like this are a big, fun party for them. It's mostly about them having fun hanging out with each other. Protesting is their leisure activity just like some women in country clubs like tennis or golf. The stunts they do to gain publicity by disrupting public hearings are childish. They come across as female frat boys in that regard.

While they are not serious, the effects of their protest could be terribly serious. Their frivolous protesting could cost women in Iraq any hope of gaining the freedom and security Code Pink takes for granted in America. Such wrongheaded activism brings about the very violence and oppression they purport to oppose. It's enough to make the angels weep in despair.

Please click on "ANSWER Rally in Lafayette Park, Part 3."

(Come back later, I'm still writing it but I was threatened and physically attacked by commies at the rally. In subsequent parts, I'll tell about the protestors who climbed the wall at the Capitol to get arrested, sometimes fighting it out with the cops, and the cowardly cell of wannabe revolutionaries)

"The Troops Are The Terrorists!"

Gael Murphy of Code Pink made a visit last April 20th to the weekly protest Code Pink started every Friday night at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington, DC. It's been going on for over two years now, counter-protested by the DC Chapter of Free Republic, the Freepers. Murphy brought along a film crew from French-Canadian TV 3 of Quebec doing a story on Code Pink. She and her posse walked up to confront the Freeper counter-protestors at the gates of Walter Reed to get some fun footage for the anti-American Canucks of Quebec.

That's when a Code Pink pal of Gael Murphy stepped to the front to call our troops the terrorists in Iraq. You can watch her do it at about 3:20 on the Freeper video. And that's when the Code Pink hit the fan.

This is the same Code Pink which sports signs saying they support the troops. The radical Left has learned from Vietnam that openly disparaging our troops does not sell well to the American public so this time around they've adopted a pose of "loving the troops, hating the war." Every now and then, the mask slips and they reveal their true face of hatred for the military. They hate the troops and love the war as long as American loses.