The war was based and sold on lies. Nothing this administration has
said has been accurate or truthful. A majority of the American people
now believe this.
Smearing a mother who lost her child for no valid reason won't change this.
The rapidly dwindling minority of Americans who continue to search for
some rationale for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq has been driven to the
brink of breakdown by the success of Sheehan's protest. Go to the
website of William F. Buckley's National Review magazine and you will
find Sheehan described in headlines as "nutty," dismissed by columnists
as "the mouthpiece... of howling-at-the-moon, bile-spewing Bush haters"
and accused of "sucking up intellectual air" that, presumably, would be
better utilized by Condoleezza Rice explaining once more that it would
be wrong to read too much into the August 6, 2001, briefing document
that declared: "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." Human
Events, the conservative weekly newspaper, dismisses Sheehan as a
"professional griever" who "can claim to be in perpetual mourning for
her fallen son" -- as if there is some time limit on maternal sorrow
over the death of a child.
Fox News Channel spinner-in-chief Bill O'Reilly accuses Sheehan of
being "in bed with the radical left," including -- horrors! -- "9-11
families" that are still seeking answers about whether, in the first
months of 2001, the Bush administration was more focused on finding
excuses to attack Iraq than on protecting Americans from terrorism. And
Rush Limbaugh was on the radio the other day ranting about how,
"(Sheehan's) story is nothing more than forged documents. There's
nothing about it that's real..." (Just to clarify for Limbaugh
listeners: Cindy Sheehan's 24-year-old son Casey really did die in Iraq, and his mother really
would like to talk with President Bush about all those claims regarding
WMDs and al-Qaida ties that the administration used to peddle the
"case" for war.)
The pro-war pundits who continue to defend the occupation of Iraq
are freaked out by the fact that a grieving mother is calling into
question their claim that the only way to "support the troops" is by
keeping them in the frontlines of George W. Bush's failed experiment.
Bush backers are horrified that Sheehan's sincere and patriotic
anti-war voice has captured the nation's attention.
What the pro-war crowd does not understand is that Cindy Sheehan is
not inspiring opposition to the occupation. She is merely putting a
face on the mainstream sentiments of a country that has stopped
believing the president's promises with regard to Iraq. According to
the latest Newsweek poll, 61 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's
handing of the war, while just 26 percent support the president's
argument that large numbers of U.S. military personnel should remain in
Iraq for as long as it takes to achieve the administration's goals
there.
The supporters of this war have run out of convincing lies and
effective emotional appeals. Now, they are reduced to attacking the
grieving mothers of dead soldiers. Samuel Johnson suggested that
patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But, with their attacks
on Cindy Sheehan, the apologists for George Bush's infamy have found a
new and darker refuge.
So a surrogate war has produced a surrogate antiwar movement. This
time, mass protests would only cloud the issue. As the parent of a dead
soldier, Sheehan has so much moral authority precisely because so few
Americans including so few of us who supported the war risk sharing
her plight.
But if Sheehan's vigil says something important about Iraq, it also
says something important about President Bush. Sheehan, after all, has
only one demand: She wants to confront the president face to face. The
demand is so provocative because one of George W. Bush's defining
qualities is his aversion to exactly this sort of challenge. According to former Environmental
Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman, "There is a
palace guard, and they want to run interference for him." Former
Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill described Bush as "caught in an echo
chamber of his own making, cut off from everyone other than a circle
around him that's tiny and getting smaller and in concert on
everything."
If our president could take the time to dress up in a flight suit
and travel to an aircraft carrier, an executive version of a Super Bowl
touchdown dance, why can he not take the time to answer Cindy Sheehan?
Move America Forward's Shady Dealings. Max Blumenthal
has some great information about the front group that has bankrolled
the Creepy Caravan tour to attack Cindy Sheehan. Here's a little about
Sal Russo:
"If Kaloogian wants to fight
corruption, he should get up, turn the light on, and take a look in his
own slimy bed. After all, Move America Forward's "Chief Strategist,"
Sal Russo, who handled Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial
campaign, is knee-deep in unethical business dealings and scandals."
and this: "That's right. Move America Forward's Sal Russo ran tax shelters and bilked campaign donors out of $200,000.
Oh, and then there's the little thing about Russo and Simon being in
bed with a major drug trafficker, something they still can't explain" ...read on
Freeper Bust Update: 08/28/05 "Ken Robinson, of Richardson,
Texas, who described himself as a Vietnam veteran, was carrying a sign
at a “You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy!” rally. The sign read, “How to
wreck your family in 30 days by ‘b**** in the ditch' Cindy Sheehan and a picture of the sign appears above in this post. .”
Kristinn Taylor, an event organizer with FreeRepublic.com, heard about
the sign and rushed up to Robinson. “This is our rally and you can't
do that here,” he said, only for Robinson to insist he was within his
rights....
“Just get outta here!” Robinson yelled, and aimed
a kick at Taylor's midsection. Taylor called for security, and a young
Woodway policeman quickly showed up."
The rapidly dwindling minority of Americans who continue to search for
some rationale for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq has been driven to the
brink of breakdown by the success of Sheehan's protest. Go to the
website of William F. Buckley's National Review magazine and you will
find Sheehan described in headlines as "nutty," dismissed by columnists
as 
The pro-war pundits who continue to defend the occupation of Iraq
are freaked out by the fact that a grieving mother is calling into
question their claim that the only way to 
