OK, I got most of the decent pictures up. What a great day for an old squid. Frackin' freezing, but the rally was successful far beyond the organizers hopes. We easily outnumbered International Answer, the dozen code pinkos, and a score of anarchists. The park service is calling out 30,000 Eagles attending, but truthfully I think the number was more like 15000. As we hoped to get 1500, this was amazing for an arctic day. It was very hard to tell numbers - Vets were everywhere, at memorials, confronting moonbats, across the bridge in Arlington.

Amanda finds Jane Fonda's Field Office...this was at the beginning of the gauntlet that the Eagles formed...some moonbats used it to enter their gathering point. Fun was had by all.


We got there before 8AM and it was cold and dim...


People were getting their signs ready...notice the spit shield on one guy. Those things were all over.


Things really started picking up after 10AM.  Up until then, most Eagles were setting up, visiting the memorials, and getting their game plan together.  There was electricity in the air as the realization of our growing numbers started to sink in.

I was just out of frame for this picture on Michelle Malkin's site. In fact I helped that guy on the right to get up on the barrier.

One picture below shows the back of the crowd of Eagles forced up on the lawn on the Lincoln Memorial, while the picture below it shows the depth of the crowd spilling from there onto the street facing Answer at their gathering spot.  It stretched like this for a city block.  Everywhere you went on this end of the mall you would find thousands of vets.



This was at 8 in the morning, one of two lines waiting for airport-type security checks (white tent by 'three soldiers' statue) before entering the Vietnam Memorial. The lines only got longer as the day progressed. The wind chill in this picture is about 15 degrees.  The park security packed up when the moonbats marched to the Pentagon.


The moonbats were thin on the ground. If there were 5000 of them total in their various locations, I'd be surprised. How ever many of them that they were, we had them outnumbered.




This is the entire Answer gathering area from the position of another group of vets at a food kiosk in the Answer area ...about 11AM.  Geeze, pathetic.


Even here at this main Answer location beside the Lincoln Memorial, the moonbats were outnumbered by Eagles, much less anywhere else the commies went on the mall.  We surrounded the moonbats on all sides,  at the same time we were at every memorial including Walter Reed hospital and those at Arlington.  Don't believe what you read in the papers - we were there in force.


This was just one of five locations I visited in a quick walkabout and every one of them had thousands of Eagles there.  This was in front of the Lincoln Memorial.




Just a few of the memorials we guarded.  Nurses.


Korea.


WWII


Vietnam


I'll leave you with a picture taken by Amanda of some of the thousands of flags covering the site. 10,000 flags were collected across the country, signed with messages, and will be sent to Iraq.


This is a gauntlet of vets that stretched a city block along Constitution and funneled moonbats through to their gathering point. My daughter (above) and I were walking thru it when a bunch of bikers mistook my daughter for a moonbat...
"You're too pretty to be a moonbat."
"Why do you want to hate America...", etc.
She gets up into this big grizzled bikers face, points to her armband, and says, "What are you frickin' blind, don't you see this armband, what's the frickin' matter with you." (I could have warned him).
She owned them. They literally turned red with embarrassment, apologized like little kids, and offered her a prime spot in their part of the gauntlet. The gauntlet started up by the Jane Fonda memorial porta-potty.


I'd like to think that this gathering was a sharp spike in the hearts of the moonbat community.  They didn't get their way this time, and it appeared that they realized it.  They got surprise, humiliation, shame, and embarrassment in trying to confront this many veterans. This ain't 40 years ago.

Update: Jack Langer on Human Events....

Despite their fetish for the right to "dissent," the war protestors are unaccustomed to opposition, aside perhaps from a lone College Republican or two that might show up with an American flag at a campus protest. But these counter-demonstrators were different. They were combat veterans who still bristle at the memory of being jeered by these kinds of radicals when they returned from Vietnam. The marchers seemed not only nervous, but even ashamed - to prove their patriotism to the vets, they began chanting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" This was probably the first time that chant has ever been heard at an antiwar rally.

Then, in one final act of "resistance" before vacating the bridge, one of them burned an American flag, to the cheers of all the rest. This incident went unreported in all of the mainstream media, despite the presence on the bridge of numerous journalists and photographers.

Walking home, I reflected on what the antiwar movement has degenerated into -- a squabbling collection of aging socialists, pro-Palestinian militants, and cowardly anarchists. The Vietnam vets -- who were there just to protect our monuments and show support for the troops -- had a surprising effect on the protestors. "Fight back! Fight back!" was one of the protestors' slogans. But it was all talk. When confronted by people who actually fought and bled for their country, the protestors grew sheepish and embarrassed - I would even say humiliated.

I couldn't help but notice that the anarchists - the supposed hardcore fringe of the movement - waited until they were safely out of range of the veterans to burn a flag. Afraid of the vets, afraid of the cops, they don't seem to be good for much other than occasionally smashing storefront windows when there's no one else around.

"Whose streets? Our streets!", they chanted. Not on Saturday they weren't.

Eagles Up!

Oh, and whenever I go to Washingtoon I visit this location. This ancestor of mine was a homicidal Admiral. Just add him to a great uncle who was shot by the Black and Tan, various thieves and scoundrels, deported bog Irish, Marines and other assorted villains. On Judgment Day, when Saint Peter checks the rolls of all our families, he'll look at mine and say, "Oh Geese, that lot."


The hat was a big hit.  Four people came up to me to ask about it.  Molon Labe, you gun-grabbing moonbats.

Michelle Malkin has a huge roundup of links..

Hot Air has the video up...