This letter is in regard to the misinformation opinion by David Cannon about the Jan. 6 insurrection (“Revisiting Jan. 6 — a protest gone wrong,” published Jan. 26). According to him it was not an insurrection, but a protest that got out of hand. Please disregard that there were several deaths, a reserve team waiting off-site to jump in with guns and bombs, that there were loud demands to hang the former Vice President as well as a gallows erected in this honor.

According to Mr. Cannon, not all the videos have been released. But we do have shows that it was not a “normal tourist visit” as Congressman Andrew Clyde has tried to misinform us. When Mr. Cannon claims we should not judge what we see on television, just what are we to think when we see our police being beaten with flag poles, crutches, batons, hockey sticks and barricades as well as hit with bear spray?

Mr. Cannon’s selectively focusing on the insurrectionists having calmed down once they climbed ropes, smashed windows and doors and entered, ignores those that were trying to find Congressperson Pelosi and Vice President Pence. This also ignores the smearing of excrement on the walls and destroying government property. This is disinformation trying to bamboozle us.

If what Mr. Cannon says is true, then we can rewrite the Civil War as merely a peaceful trip North by General Lee to arrive at Gettysburg in order to buy shoes for his men. We could assume when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor it was only their way of coming to a peaceful Hawaiian luau. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln should not have considered the firing on Fort Sumter as being an act of aggression by a foreign power, just a little peaceful protest gone wrong.

Mr. Cannon is correct in saying Jan. 6 was not the worst attack on our government. The attempted destruction of our nation’s capitol by the Al-Qaida pilots would have been worse. But to compare the anti-Vietnam War marches and violence as comparable is a mistake. No one in the late 60s and early 70s tried to invade our nation’s capitol and take control of our government.

As for those poor little boys who are languishing in prison due to their acts as traitors to our nation, they are lucky. Most nations would have eliminated them on the spot — no trial, no imprisonment. It is lucky for them that Mike Pence was not hung. The evidence coming to light by the Senate investigation committee is revealing much more organization, funding, and plans to overthrow our government than we knew.

Dorothy of “The Wizard of Oz” was correct. Look with your own eyes at the videos on television of the near-overthrow of our government. Mr. Cannon is that little man in the corner who wants you to believe there was no insurrection and that those who organized the event were nice peaceful patriotic people who do not deserve to be punished. Go get him Toto, he is full of disinformation and lies.

Eugene Clegg

Enumclaw