Posted on 09/25/2005 11:13:45 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Military families and others defending the war in Iraq claimed on Sunday their turn to demonstrate on the National Mall, a response to the massive protest against the war a day earlier.
Organizers acknowledged that their rally would be much smaller than the anti-war protest that drew nearly 100,000 according to police estimates. Still, they said their message would not be overshadowed.
"We are preparing for as many as 20,000 people, just to be on the safe side," said Kristinn Taylor, a leader of FreeRepublic.com, one of the sponsors. "People have been fired up over the past month, especially military family members, and they want to be heard."
The rally was billed as a time to honor the troops fighting "the war on terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world."
On Saturday, demonstrators opposed to the war in Iraq surged past the White House in the largest anti-war protest in the nation's capital since the U.S. invasion. The rally stretched through the night, a marathon of music, speechmaking and dissent on the National Mall. (Full story)
In the crowd were young activists, nuns whose anti-war activism dates to Vietnam, parents mourning their children in uniform lost in Iraq, and uncountable families motivated for the first time to protest.
From the stage, speakers attacked President Bush's policies head on, but he was not at the White House to hear it -- he was in Colorado and Texas, monitoring hurricane recovery.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
bttt
There were between 50,000 and 80,000 people on the mall for the Book fair yesterday. Surely this number includes them.
Since there are no investigative journalists in the mainstream media capable of finding out the ingredients in a BLT, I am convinced none will ever report that.
Is today's demonstration being shown on C-SPAN?
The Baltimore Sun is reporting that over 100,000 were there to bash the war and the president.
Yesterday vs. today.
What really matters is the quality of the people who show up for an event -- as well as how well the event is presented. It's a first rate operation, with very thoughtful and articulate speakers. There wasn't a one worth listening to or being on the same platform with in yesterday's rant/yellfest. Besides the number of people actually showing up, they're doing a television production that is effectively reaching a broader audience -- which is just as important.
Before the age of television, the actual numbers attending an event might have been relevant but if one has to ability to attend a faithful rendering of the event, it's obvious to even casual observers of the differences in the quality of both participations and presentations. These people are doing honor and justice to those they are honoring -- while yesterday's rabble, do dishonor for all those associated with such embarrassments.
What's disturbing is the media's attempt to mislead. They quote that the organizers' grossly exaggerated estimates for crowd size yesterday as 100,000 and then corroborate by adding the officials don't provide their own independent estimates-- but then provide their own precise observation that the crowd at today's pro-rally is 100. Why not the organizer's estimate of what the crowd is now? And then when writing of yesterday's participation, use subjective terms like "massive," "vast," "sea," while referring to today's, note "smaller," "sparse," "sober," and "circumspect," as their loaded terms.
But who really takes the "media" seriously anymore -- but the most gullible, and I think even they are onto them? Even the poor and homeless can be heard to think, "Here comes those assholes again."
OK, the mainstream media has agreed that over 100,000 were there to bash the war and President Bush. The question is, is the number anywhere near accurate? The photos posted on FR yesterday suggested that the crowd was quite a bit smaller.
Are you going to believe your own lying eyes and ears or let the media tell you what to think? Next thing they'll be telling you is that they are "objective" -- and they have a bridge or newspaper subscriptions to sell you.
I hope people on Free Republic aren't discouraged when the numbers for today's pro-American demonstration are not as big as the numbers for yesterday's America/Israel/military-bashing display of shame. By the way, I'm not convinced that the moonbats had the 100,000 that they claimed.
We should never try to top the moonbats when it comes to numbers in demonstrations. They will always come out on top. Look at the years of experience they've had planning demonstrations. They know exactly how to draw in old hippies, ugly white women, angry blacks, slacker college students, wild-eyed socialists, and people of indeterminate sexual identification to fill the area in front of a TV camera.
Further, they can afford to spend all their waking hours planning demonstrations. They don't work, and they have endless sources of revenue from rich America-hating radicals, both at home and abroad. We, on the other hand, have jobs, military service, and families, all of which occupy our time.
So let's not try to play the enemy's game. Let them win at the demonstrations, and we'll continue to win at the ballot box. The former does not count. The latter does.
Want to hear a classic one-liner? A really, really funny joke? If your local radio station carries CNN radio "news" listen to hear the CNN employee say, "CNN radio news, the most trusted news source."
Well a good joke has to have some truth, in fact Saddam, Fidel, Kim certainly trust CNN -- just as Ho looked to his most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite.
"From the stage, speakers attacked President Bush's policies head on, but he was not at the White House to hear it -- he was in Colorado and Texas, monitoring hurricane recovery."
I guess they are going to now blame Bush for not being in the White House to hear the anti-American protest.
Without a doubt.
The number was never accurate. But since when would that prevent MSM from reporting the "so-called news?"
AS many have been pointing out, the 100,000 estimate at the "protest" is a real stretch.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1491083/posts
The aerial photos they showed of the peacenik rally showed far less than a hundred thousand, and you can be sure that the media would have cropped or zoomed the photos to make the rally look as large as possible.
It was only a fraction of the number of people you see at a typical annual Right to Life march, when the media number the crowd at 50,000.
bttt
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