One of Rusty’s furry minions has an interesting post about a recent confontation between an outspoken veteran and Code Pink. Here is the interview that a local channel was trying to have with the veteran — note the Code Pink people shoehorning their way into it. I particularly like his statement from about 1:50 to 2:11. The confrontation is here, starting around 1:50. It looks to me as though he was trying to talk to her (note the attempt to sidestep the bullhorn) and she then pushed the bullhorn into his face at least once before he knocked it away. I can’t tell what happened shortly after that when one of the women says he pushed her — it looks like he bumped her while gesturing, she shoved him, and he shoved back, although part of it seems to be happening behind her and off camera, so it’s hard to tell. She keeps yelling at him as he tries to retrieve his beret, and it looks like he and two of the code pink demonstrators push back and forth for a while.
Note that while the demonstrators claimed at the beginning that the Air Force had no right to make them leave the area in front of the base sign at the beginning of the video, they treat the soldiers who show up and step into the middle of the argument as authority figures until the police show up and they all start clamoring to press charges against him (it sounds like about 3 of them want to press charges for him pushing them — something the video may or may not support). The freepers’ report of the incident says that no charges were filed — good for the police. They say that Cindy Sheehan (the woman with the bullhorn, who incidentally was later complaining that she got a ticket for obstructing traffic) was going to look into “legal action” against the vet. From the evidence in the video, I’d say she hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell — you can’t push a bullhorn into an angry man’s face and then claim you were assaulted when he slaps it away. There may be more chance for the woman who first claimed that he pushed her, but I think that just about anyone would be able to see that she was intentionally trying to start a confrontation of some kind, and be less than sympathetic.
In the end, good on the veteran for standing up for his principles and his country. It may be a good idea to stay one step farther away the next time, however.