Institute for Public Accuracy
5 September 2008
“You Can’t Win an Occupation”
(Adam) Kokesh held up a sign — “You Can’t Win an Occupation” on one side and “McCain Votes Against Vets” on the other — at the beginning of McCain’s speech at the Republican convention last night.
Video is at:
Adam Kokesh Protests McCain At RNC 09/04/2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOaz7WhkFuo
A member of the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Kokesh said today: “It’s shameful McCain is running as a veteran considering how bad he’s been on veterans’ issues. He’s repeatedly voted against adequate Veterans Administration funding and he voted against the new GI bill.
“McCain’s rhetoric about winning or losing in Iraq makes no sense — he’s simply failing to admit that it’s an occupation. The only way ‘victory’ makes sense is to end it as soon as possible and to rapidly bring the troops home.
“I found it amusing that most of the delegates — acting like ‘dittoheads’ — tried to drown me out with chants of ‘U-S-A!’ Just two days before, I’d spoken at Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty and had the crowd there chanting ‘U-S-A!’ … I’ve found — after being sent to fight in Fallujah — that the biggest enemies of the Constitution are right here at home.”
Kokesh’s “Revolutionary Patriot” blog — which includes video of his speech — is at: http://kokesh.blogspot.com
Related: The photograph under review in the following reports appears behind McCain as the crowd is shouting down Kokesh. A school official has confirmed it is Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California.
Mystery Solved!
Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, 5 September 2008
Late Update: I’m surprised this hadn’t occurred to me. But several readers have suggested that perhaps one of the tech geeks charged with setting up the audio/visual bells and whistles for the evening was tasked with getting pictures of Walter Reed Army Medical Center but goofed and got this instead. At first I thought, No, that’s ridiculous. This is a major political party with big time professionals putting this together. Nothing is left to chance. I mean, is this the RNC or a scene out Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman? I still have a bit of a hard time believing they’re quite that incompetent. But when you figure in what appears to be the utter lack of any logic for this school being behind McCain and the fact that it has ‘Walter Reed’ in its name, I’m really not sure you can discount this possibility.
(ed.note: Special bonus snark: That’s not stock photo keyword searching we can believe in.)
How is it that a young male protestor wearing a t-shirt, sporting tattoos and carrying what must have been a 4ft long cardboard banner manages to get past a phalanx of riot police outside, convention security inside and into a building full of a sea of security conscious Republicans, post-911 paranoia and people who have Secret Service details? Or was it just convenient to let someone in to serve as a foil for McCain’s “ground noise and static” comment that felt more canned than Chef Boyardee? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
The banner appears to have been folded at some point. As Kokesh holds it out he has some difficulty keeping it from collapsing. And he’s an industrious and intelligent guy who’s been at this for a while.
But you could be right. McCain’s disdain for veterans who return from conflicts and protest the atrocities seems real. He spits on them. And he clearly enjoys being the bully on the playground. During the Vietnam war he hid behind bombs. Now he hides behind his “friends.”