They might tear down the barricades at the Lincoln Memorial next — and pee on the trees — to protest Washington dysfunction. "People here need to be thinking about serving their country and not their own sorry butts."

WASHINGTON — Military veterans are declaring war on the government shutdown. After a group of veterans broke down the barricades at the national World War II Memorial Tuesday afternoon, organizers of one Hero Flight Network group told BuzzFeed it wasn't the last Washington would hear from them. Veterans are plotting another protest at the same place Wednesday, and expressed interest in staging similar events at sites across the nation's capital, including the Lincoln Memorial — an act of civil disobedience that would likely pour fuel on the already highly flammable politics of the government shutdown. "We have people here that are 80 and 90 years old and they closed down all the bathrooms?" said Tony Nussbaum, a 25-year veteran of the Air Force from Iowa and a leader of the state's Hero Flight group. "I'm about to just start pissing on the trees." The World War II Memorial on the National Mall became a political battlefield Tuesday, with conservatives excoriating Democrats for the monument's closure as they escorted busloads of war veterans past bewildered park rangers and into the shuttered monument. On Wednesday, the scene could repeat itself when groups from the Honor Flight Network — a national charity that brings aging World War II veterans to visit the national monument to the conflict they fought in — are scheduled to arrive at the massive outdoor memorial. Meanwhile, veterans have pondered staging a similar protest at the Lincoln memorial, said Jamie Miller, a five-year veteran of the Marine Corps and another organizer of the Iowa group that stormed the World War II memorial Tuesday. "We are thinking about jumping the Lincoln memorial too," he said. "If Lincoln was a war memorial I would do it in a heart beat." Wednesday's rally at the World War II is set to become a political sideshow to the larger shutdown debate, with Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus urging Republicans to show up at the event with American flags to support the veterans and attack Democrats and Barack Obama. Those RNC supporters that show up will find a lot of Republican lawmakers — and at least one Democrat, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill — at the memorial waiting for them.

@lachlan Honor flight veterans breaking into the World War II Memorial.

The abundance of lawmakers worries Jim McLaughlin, national chair of Honor Flights Network, who said he wishes those visiting the memorials would keep politics out of it. He said the flights are planned months in advance at great expense to commercial airlines, so it wasn't feasible for Honor Flights to shut down the trips as the government closed. "I know some of the folks that showed up this morning are attempting to politicize it and I don't want that to happen," said McLaughlin. He also defended the rangers who initially tried to keep the veterans out of the memorials. "The Park Service is doing what they were instructed to do," he said. McLaughlin called on members who come to the World War II memorial to support veterans, and not to use the opportunity to score political points. "I don't want it to be political at all," he said. "That part of it I don't like. The fact that the veterans got in? I'm delighted." But in the politically charged atmosphere of the shutdown — with public outrage growing as the country becomes more aware of its lawmakers' incompetence — it will be tough to keep partisanship out of even routine war memorial visits. On Tuesday, Republicans used the World War II memorial event to blame Obama and the Democrats for the shutdown. About a dozen Republican members were on hand, according to McLaughlin — including tea party favorites like Minnesota's Michelle Bachmann and Iowa's Steve King — and he credited them with cutting the tape and moving the mobile fences that kept the public away from the shuttered memorial. But the organizers on the ground said some politicians were there for their own benefit. "Bachmann was not doing jack. She was not in the memorial in any way and didn't even touch a barricade," said Nussbaum. "She was just standing in the front with a microphone in her mouth."

Marine veteran Jamie Miller and Air Force veteran Tony Nussbaum.