Report on Monday CodePink disruption of the Petraeus hearing in the House. Led by Tallahassee's own Lydia Vickers (that's her standing on the chair shouting down the 'good' general...

What a fabulous start in D.C. CODEPINK (Desiree, Barbara, Lelsie A., Medea B., Mona, Arizona Liz, and myself), IVAW, Col. Wright, David Swanson and others waited almost four hours this morning to go into the Petreaus Report hearing. CODEPINK co-founder Gael Murphy was refused entrance and tried in vane to get in the room. One of the Capitol officers had his panties in a wad and decided only 7 of us could go in. Even Medea couldn't change his sorry mind. Cindy Sheehan and her sister DeDe arrived about 30 minutes before the hearing started and were refused entrance. The up-tight cop actually gave us little blue pieces of paper with numbers on them 1-7. CPer Debby gave up her number so Col. Wright could get in. In the mean time, The Honorable Rev. Yearwood had been in line with us for about 2 hours. Just as we started to go in he was pulled from the line for "cutting in" - it's sooooooooooo high school.

Full report below the fold....
NOTE: Cindy, DeDe and Rev. Yearwood were arrested, in the hall, for absolutely nothing more than raising their voices. Unfortunately Rev. Yearwood had pissed off the "hallway cop" who was bothering us earlier and, after a little posturing he was thrown to the floor, 8 cops jumped on him and he is in the hospital getting x-rayed for a broken ankle.

Back to the hearing, when we got into the hearing we were warned immediately to sit still, no standing, no signs, no banners blah, blah, blah. Deseriee decided she wasn't going to sit down.

The "hallway" cop was hovering, asking her to sit down. She refused, he grabbed her and she started yelling "WAR CRIMINAL, WAR CRIMINAL, WAR CRIMINAL" at the top of her lungs as he drug her from the room. First one arrested! Not long after that, when Petraeus was just absolutely lying, Leslie A. stood up and said "that's not true. That's a lie. I've been to Iran. The people are lovely". She was escorted out (they didn't arrest her???).

Let me note here that we had planned to upset the meeting, one at a time, so we were each waiting for our cue.

About this time Ray McGovern yells "SWEAR HIM IN". The chair asked him to leave, he refused for a time but was escorted out. We continued to listen to the "report" just shaking our heads at the lies. I heard Gen. P. mention Iran 4-5 times and was starting to get a little sick of him.

Medea, behind me start yelling "General Petraeus, the American people don't believe you any more....." and was taken away. Today is Medea's birthday and she will surely spend the night in jail. Then, Mona started yelling "???? (I couldn't hear what she said because the whole place started standing up to see what was going on.)

Keep in mind that by this time we had been warned by the chair to be quiet. Duncan Hunter was besides himself with wanting to get us kicked out. He didn't realize his mike was on and was saying something like "we need to get them out of here - that group in the back - CODEPINK - they are going to keep interrupting the meeting....." someone came and shut off his mike.

So, Mona is yelling and I had my cue. I stood on my chair and started yelling "General Petreaus, you're just like Colin Powell, you're ruining our military, you're going to bankrupt our country, you've betrayed military families, you'll go down in history, just like Colin Powell". At this point the police are grabbing Mona and she decides to resist. She said "don't touch me, NO, NO, No, let go of me, I'm 70 years old.....No, No.....". I jumped off of my chair and said "leave her alone" and saw an opportunity to walk out. An officer got behind me. Mona is still hysterical as I'm being escorted from the hearing. Within minutes, and after a stern warning and threat of prosecution, Arizona Liz stood up to say her piece (again, I couldn't hear her 'cuz I was out the door by this time).

When we got in the hallway the officer behind me realized he needed to help the other cops with Mona. He told four officers in the hall to "hold her (me) and turned around to go help with Mona. I don't think the hallway cops heard him. As I walked toward them it was obvious that only one of them was coming to me. I saw my opportunity and started to walk, really, really fast. I passed the cops, said hi to Tiffany Burns (dear friend, Cindy Sheehan's personal assistant - who got arrested shortly thereafter) and kept on walking. I passed a group of cameras in the hall, turned the corner and pressed the elevator button. About this time an officer was coming up the stairs, not knowing what was going on, and said "use the stairs, it's faster!!!!!".

You never saw a pink cape fly down the hall and stairways so fast. I kept myself from running and within minutes was out the door, headed home.

The coolest part is that all of this made it onto the C-Span. It's great because they had a 45 second delay (just for this kind of stuff) and it made it anyway. Cactus Pat just called to say Wolf Blitzer started The Situation Room (at 5:00 PM) with a clip and I am attaching the MSNBC video link for your enjoyment.

Peace, Lydia in DC

Corporate media report at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20689394/ or click here for direct link to MSNBC video...

If anyone has a better copy of the video, contact us.

Full info at www.betrayusreport.com ...

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