Ya say you want a Revolution….

Ya say you want a Revolution,
We-ll-ll, you know . . .

Apparently you’ll have to wait a while.

According to Michael Fumento, who was there, what happened at the much heralded (from the anti-War movement) March on the Capitol was plenty of nothing. The photos he took give you an idea of the kind of fringe lunatics and nut cases who attended, with the usual “Bushitler” and “9/11 was a government job” signs. It’s an icky collection of people and I’m sure most Americans don’t identify with them. Sadly, though, so many of their ideas seem to percolate up, sort of like dead bodies floating to the surface of standing water.

The AP’s representative was much more impressed. You can just see him having rosy visions of 60s era protests, with flowing haired flower children singing “We shall overcome” (and the protesters did, indeed, resurrect the hoary anti-War classic “War: What is it good for?”:

Denouncing a conflict entering its fifth year, protesters across the country raised their voices Saturday against U.S. policy in Iraq and marched by the thousands to the Pentagon in the footsteps of an epic demonstration four decades ago against another divisive war.

A counterprotest was staged, too, on a day of dueling signs and sentiments such as “Illegal Combat” and “Peace Through Strength,” and songs like “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “War (What’s It Good For?).”

Thousands crossed the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial to rally loudly but peacefully near the Pentagon. “We’re here in the shadow of the war machine,” said anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. “It’s like being in the shadow of the death star. They take their death and destruction and they export it around the world. We need to shut it down.”

The most the AP could sum up re American numbers was that “Police no longer give official estimates but said privately that perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 anti-war demonstrators marched, with a smaller but still sizable number of counterprotesters also out in force.” I have my doubts about that, unless all of the marchers instantly dispersed after having made their point. Thus, Michael Fumento notes in his post that “I got there just after the march ended and I’d put it at hardly more than a thousand. Indeed, I was able to photograph the whole crowd - without benefit of a wide angle lens.”

Some large crowds were indeed present at anti-War rallies — in Spain! The article notes that the Spanish, who no longer have a dog in this fight (or, since they’re Spanish, should I say “a bull in this ring”) were able to amass “tens of thousands.” I can’t even begin to imagine what conclusions to draw from that little factoid.

Unsurprisingly, the AP article gives short shrift to the Gathering of Eagles, quoting only one who notes how much the Vietnam War was lost at home, but giving greater air time to other Vets opposed to the War.

Overall, no matter how you puff it, it was a fizzle. Instead of hundreds of thousands converging on our nation’s capitol, we got Cindy Sheehan trying to win her audience with a pop culture reference to Star Wars, in which she refers to her own country, not as the good guys, but as the Evil Empire.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin fills in where the AP left off, telling us about the Gathering of Eagles.

UPDATE II:  The AP story I linked to yesterday implied that the moonbats were the big gathering, with the “counter-protesters” (i.e., the Gathering of Eagles) being a sort of small coda to it all.  Although there were no actual numbers, AP assured us that 10 or maybe even 20 thousand showed up.  (This was contrary to Michael Fumento’s eyewitness report that, within minutes of the march’s end, only about 1,000 moonbats were still there.)

What’s fascinating is that it turns out that there were 30,000 Eagles gathered — far outstripping even the most optimistic reports about the Moonbat March.  On numbers alone, therefore, the Eagles story is by far the bigger one.

Nevertheless, the controlling meme regarding the protest is still the AP version, which according to a Google News search, now shows up in 300 papers around America, with each reader believing that the whole story is the Moonbat protest, along with some other negligible stuff.  This is why I don’t like the MSM.  To the extent it tells the truth, it still lies by omission.