WP: On the (Pentagon's) Freedom Walk, Many Bridges to Cross

[DeepModem Mom]

On the Freedom Walk, Many Bridges to Cross
By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 12, 2005; Page C01


This is what we're walking for when we walk for freedom, according to participants in the Pentagon-sponsored Freedom Walk yesterday:

To remember the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. To support the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. To support the war in Iraq. To support the war on terrorism. To support American troops in all 177 countries where they serve. To support particular American troops, such as Sgt. Edward Scherz at Camp Fallujah in Iraq. To remember those killed in action in Iraq, such as Spec. Kyle Andrew Griffin. To support veterans. To raise money for the Pentagon Memorial to 9/11 victims. To raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina....

***

Sometimes people caution against linking everything to everything, but such advice often goes unheeded. Not discussed much yesterday were President Bush's acknowledgments that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Sept. 11. And never mind that Pentagon spokesmen have insisted that the Freedom Walk was not a pro-war stroll. It was about the troops, said the spokesmen, not the war.

Most of the walkers strayed way off those messages. They made the connections. Survivors of the Pentagon attack walked with relatives of soldiers in Iraq. Legless veterans of Iraq sat in the front row at the post-walk Clint Black concert, beside family members of those who died in the Pentagon or aboard American Airlines Flight 77 on 9/11.

The walkers echoed Bush on other occasions when he linked Sept. 11 to Iraq in a greater drama of a war on terror....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/11/AR2005091101345.html

[loudsue]

1. Sounds like a veritable Military love fest.

:puke:

:kick:

[hatrack]

2. Yup, and if five sponsors and Clint Black is the best they can do . . .

Things are going even worse than they'll ever admit.

[goforit]

15. Ya!!!Where is the old grand "Bob Hope" of this era? Not around , eh?

Great point hatrack!

[spacelady]

3. So, Did that there thing go well or not?

[AuntiBush]

4. I Seen 4 Today. That's it!

Over a packed 95 bridge, with traffic snarled going North and South. On 1 bridge were 4 people, balloons, streamers trying to rally on the cars for 9/11, War in Iraq & Bush.

I sat in the car and watched. Not "1" horn honk, rather middle-fingers sticking out of countless cars and sounds of "F-U" in the passing highway distant.

Just 4 party-war-animals. That was it, less then 50 miles from that fowl smelling hill

[spacelady]

5. No Way! n/t

[leveymg]

6. 17,000 registered, a quarter of them showed up. Was a nice day for it too

Saw a very brief story this morning on the local CBS Affiliate (WUSA).One long shot of the whole crowd mustered as it set off from the Pentagon parking lot -- looked like no more 3-4000 people. The announcer said that 17,000 had registered, but gave no figure for actual attendance.

Every man in the crowd had a regulation jarhead haircut. Pretty pathetic turnout, really, considering that more than 15,000 people work in the Pentagon, and DC has many other military installations.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. To me, there's a sadness to this, too. Like the parents...

who opposed Cindy Sheehan, it's difficult to impossible, I imagine, for these people to accept that we've been led into a morass, that lives have been lost, for no good reason.

[leveymg]

9. Some are true believers, and will curse reality with their last breath.

But, that's maybe half of Bush's remaining base of support (roughly 15-20 percent of the American electorate).

The group that really matters are the 1/10 of one percent who really operate the levers of power in the United States. I'm talking about the corporate CEOs, the Generals, and the NY bankers.

BushCo has lavishly rewarded this group, and transferred trillions into their coffers, but they tend to be intelligent realists. They have to know that what BushCo does from this point forward is counterproductive. Just how much of a loss they're willing to endure during the next three years is a real question.

I tend to believe that there's going to be a move to remove Bush and Cheney, either by indictments and/or by quiet but firm pursuasion from the top brass.

[bribri16]

19. You can bet that most were Pentagon employees. Not that much of a crowd.

Here's how I know. We travel to church downtown DC via Geo. Wash. Memorial Parkway every Sunday. When there is a football game at the stadium and another event in town, like a walk-a-thon, bikers etc, and other demonstrations, traffic is balled up for hours during the time we are in transit (9:30-10:45). This past Sunday was the lightest trafic we have seen since the sniper was out and about over two years ago. We thought that we were going to get snarled in traffic so we left about 30 minutes early and breezed right throuh and over the 14th St bridge. SoI am assuming that most of the folks attending this "celebration" had passes for parking at the Pentagon and there wasn't any overflow traffic. When we came home about 1:30...it was about the same.

[gratuitous]

8. Okay, I read the story twice: How many?

How many "walkers" were there? I understand that they were there for a smorgasbord of reasons, including one idiot who actually thinks that the September 11, 2001 attacks were the first time anyone had died due to a terrorist action. But how many were there? I saw pre-walk estimates of six figures, adjusted down to high five figures, reality-checked down to the low five figures, but there isn't one word about how many people we're talking about.

How many, Washington Post? After all, you were one of the original sponsors of this little propaganda fiasco. How many turned out for yet another Bush administration photo op?

[mirror wall]

11. Americablog has some interesting coverage on this.

I didn't see any hard numbers but this and this are probably pretty indicative of just how sparse it was. Good.

[leveymg]

12. There's no estimate that I've seen beyond my own eyes.

I know the South Parking Lot of the Pentagon, which was the staging area for the march. It's vast. The news shot that I saw was a long lens pull-back. The crowd at that stage was no more than 1000 feet long by 250 feet wide (roughly 250,000 square feet) - calculate 36 square feet per person. That comes out to a little less than 7,000 people. My earlier estimate of 3-5000 may have been a bit conservative.

[Catchawave]

10. Sponsored by the Defense Department....

What I saw of it, looked like the crowd was packed with Pentagon employees and government contractors! Also, the gall of them to commercialize this with the many signs I saw printed with their company logo!

Something else that bugged me, 9/11 is a very somber day in our history, all that waving and laughing looked more like a celebration than a memorial. Probably better suited for a 4th of July, which is truly our anniversary for Freedom Marchin' !

I wonder what the projected attendance is for Sept 24 ?

[gratuitous]

14. The projected number for Sept. 24? Same as for this fiasco

"Thousands."

[Catchawave]

17. LOL....that was the same estimate for the

GOP convention ? Let's see, watched both on Cspan, one took only 15 minutes to pass the Cspan camera, the other took about 3 hours?

"Thousands" pretty much covers it :hi:

[godai]

13. Poor, poor pitiful me

I watched the coverage on C-SPAN and as the crowd started the march (looked like cattle being fed into a pen) the live group performed some unknown song with FREEDOM being just about every other word. After that, I heard the singer say something like 'we need to keep going until they're out of here'. Ironically, about 15 minutes later, they apparently had run though all the songs they knew and did Warren Zevon's Poor, Poor Pitiful Me, as the last people left the parking lot at the Pentagon. How appropriate! A 'freedom walk' with no freedom.

[DancingBear]

16. In the Post article, there is a picture of Rumsfeld grinning like a madman

Can anyone get this picture up on DU? My scanner is packed in a box somewhere...

[fasttense]

18. Disgusting

As hundreds of dead bodies lie in the street of New Orleans, these folks have a celebration. At least have the class to wait two weeks.