Veterans’ Gathering Scheduled for 9:00 a.m. Sunday at “Closed” World War II Memorial

THOUSANDS, POSSIBLY MILLIONS OF VETERANS TO DESCEND ON NATIONAL MALL IN DEFIANCE OF OBAMA REGIME’S ORDERS

by Sharon Rondeau

(Oct. 9, 2013) — Special Operations Speaks (SOS) and other groups have organized a gathering of veterans at the World War II memorial in Washington, DC at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 13.

The memorial is located on the National Mall, which is overseen by the National Park Service and includes the Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, Constitution Gardens, and the Korean War Veterans’ Memorial, among others.  The National Mall’s purpose is stated as providing “a monumental, dignified, and symbolic setting for the governmental structures, museums and national memorials” and to “maintain…commemorative works (memorials, monuments, statues, sites, gardens) that honor presidential legacies, distinguished public figures, ideas, events, and military and civilian sacrifices and contributions.”

The Sunday event coincides with the third day of a Truckers’ Ride for the Constitution in Washington with which there is no corroboration as of this writing, according to Larry Bailey, co-founder of SOS.   Bailey’s organization represents over 700 retired Special Operations veterans and has been pressing Congress for a special committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.

The website established for the veterans’ gathering asks the public to “help circle the wagons” in response to the barricading of veterans’ memorials across the country as a result of the partial government shutdown which began on October 1 when the last appropriations bill expired.

As of midnight on September 30, the two chambers of Congress were unable to come to an agreement on a Continuing Resolution, with the House voting to first defund, then delay for a year, Obama’s health care bill known as Obamacare.  The Democrat-controlled Senate would not approve any alterations to Obamacare, and a stalemate ensued which is in its ninth day.

Since the shutdown, the Obama regime ordered that veterans and other tourists be removed or kept from accessing their war memorials.  Tourists to Yellowstone National Park and other parks have been met with warning signs, eviction notices, and even armed park rangers.  One park ranger was quoted as having said that he and is fellow rangers were instructed to “make life as difficult for people as we can.”

War memorials have never been placed off-limits during a government shutdown or at any other time in the nation’s history.  On Tuesday, despite the closing off of veterans’ memorials, the National Mall was opened to a group advocating immigration reform, where eight Democrat congressmen were arrested.

Members of Congress have arrived and posed for photo-ops with visitors at the war memorials since October 1, when the first of frequent “Honor Flight” veterans’ visits began arriving following the shutdown.  Veterans and their escorts entered the memorial grounds after moving the barricades, despite the threat of arrest from the National Parks Service last Wednesday.

Since the partial shutdown, the Obama regime has failed to pay customary death and funeral benefits to survivors of soldiers killed on active duty.  On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed an additional resolution affirming that the death benefits should be paid during the shutdown.

Rep. Steve Stockman will be a guest speaker at Sunday’s veterans’ event.  In an interview with Capt. Bailey on Wednesday, he indicated that former Rep. Allen West and others were invited to speak but were not yet confirmed.

The Post & Email asked how the idea for the veterans’ event began, to which he responded:

I don’t really know who started it.  We’re the principal organizers, but we’re not the conceivers.  It was a fellow I had never heard of, but he was going to take Mark Levin up with his threat to have 500,000 veterans at the World War II memorial. He got it started, and our political director up in DC latched onto it.  While we’re not that big, we have a big network, and we’ve been able to pull in certain elements of that network and get the word out.

We have a website up – vetmarch.com – and that’s going to be our base station, so to speak,where people can ask questions.  We also have a Facebook page.

The concept of operations is going to be severely restricted by our lack of a permit.  I don’t think anybody has even applied for a permit, to tell you the truth.  We hope to have something of a constitutional confrontation, not a physical confrontation.  We don’t want anyone to go to jail, but we want the administration to show its full intent to how far they’re willing to go without actually going thereby pushing them to the limits and then backing off.

If we have 50,000 people there, that will blow my mind.  We may have that many, because there are people all over the country who are flying in, driving in…I know people from Chicago who are going to drive in with their house guests.  I know people from southern Florida who are driving up, and two of them are physically not in good health.  So short of trying to get an estimate of the passion that’s involved here – and I detect a lot of passion – we won’t know how many people are coming.

I could compare it with what happened in 2007 when a retired Army colonel and I put together a Gathering of Eagles.  I actually detect at least as much enthusiasm and as much anger for this event as I did for that event.  In those days, we didn’t have any money, we had two months of time…now we have a little bit of money, we have an organization in place, and our communications are far more sophisticated.

The Post & Email asked Capt. Bailey how long the event was expected to last, to which he said, “A couple of hours.  Congressman Steve Stockman has agreed to speak, and I’m working on Allen West.  We’ll try to get two or three others.  If we have a million people, they’re going to be milling around for long past two hours. We’re not going to try to surround the White House and do anything stupid, or at least I’m not going to hang around while somebody else does something stupid.  But there could be some people who are agitated enough to cut the wires on the barriers so that the barriers can be taken down.

Bailey said that he has learned of at least two park rangers who have moved the barriers for visiting veterans over the last week despite their orders from the regime.

“I’m not going to say that there won’t be any scuffling around or technical violations of the law…I might even carry some bolt-cutters myself.  Those little barriers are easy to move; one person can pick them up and walk off with them, but if they’re all linked together, it makes it pretty hard.  If we have some bolt-cutters, that pretty-much evens the odds for us old retired guys to be able to do something,” Bailey said.  “We may be able to walk around them; the barriers don’t really mean anything.”

We asked Bailey why the Obama regime would bar access to open-air monuments when they are normally unstaffed, to which he said, “There are two very good friends of mine who are very astute observers and thinkers, and one of them said, Larry, if you-all do that, you’re playing right into Obama’s hands, and my friend has a point.  They’re trying to smoke out the leadership of each estimable group that is going to stand in his way when he wants to declare a national emergency and truly usurp military power.  That’s something to be considered, and that’s the main reason we don’t want to give them any excuses at all to declare a national emergency.  That’s going to be my objective up there:  to keep people from getting out of line.”

To summarize the event, Bailey told us, “It’s high time that somebody enabled our veterans to stand up for themselves.  Special Operations Speaks is trying to do just that.”

The Post & Email asked Capt. Bailey if he believes the Obama regime intends to arrest elderly veterans en masse, to which he replied, “If they were doing that, they’re either more stupid than I think or they’re more devious,but that’s purely conjecture.”