I’m not going to refute this in detail, because it‘s been argued adnauseum on many threads. But this is my view, and be warned, it is a strong and angry one.
I watched it unfold in real time via videos uploaded by observers and participants, with complete disbelief that this was happening. I listened to what they saying in the immediate aftermath, the police, the people who worked there, even Republican lawmakers who were shaken and at the time were in fear of their lives. Those were honest reactions, not yet walked back on once they tested the political winds of their base.
More than 2000 people entered the Capitol, many armed with bats, pepper spray, metal poles, tazers….rapidly overwhelming the police and viscously beating them. Injuries included broken bones, broken vertebrae, traumatic brain injuries, heart attacks and in the immediate aftermath, several suicides. It was mob violence, not peaceful. Yes, there were those who got carried away, that it is no excuse.
The moment they forced their way in, they were committing a crime.
There is also no evidence to support police initiating violence, rather
they were responding to overwhelming violence from people who came PREPARED for violence.
Interviews show failures of leadership and communication put Capitol cops at risk and allowed rioters to get dangerously close to members of Congress.
www.jsonline.com
The riot squad defending the embattled entrance to the west side of the U.S. Capitol was surrounded by violence. Rioters had clambered up the scaffolding by the stage erected for the inauguration of President Joseph Biden. They hurled everything they could get their hands on at the cops beneath: rebar, plywood, power tools, even cans of food they had frozen for extra damage.
In front of the cops, a mob was mounting a frontal assault. Its members hit officers with fists and baseball bats. They grabbed at weapons slung from the officers’ waists. They unleashed a barrage of M-80 firecrackers. Soaked in never-ending streams of bright orange bear spray, the officers choked on plumes of acrid smoke that singed their nostrils and obscured their vision.
One officer in the middle of the scrum, a combat veteran, thought the rioters were so vicious, so relentless, that they seemed fueled by methamphetamine. To his left, he watched a chunk of steel strike a fellow officer above the eye, setting off a geyser of blood. A pepper ball tore through the air over his shoulder and exploded against the jaw of a man in front of him. The round, filled with chemical irritant, ripped the rioter’s face open. His teeth were now visible through a hole in his cheek. Blood poured out, puddling on the pavement surrounding the building. But the man kept coming.
The combat veteran was hit with bear spray eight times. His experience overseas "was nothing like this,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
There is no justification, no excuses, and honorable people? They aren’t the ones trying to rewrite what happened
or gaslighting the police. They are not calling terrorists like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers “patriots”. These are the patriots.
These people are the
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