Cindy Sheehan, right, hugs fellow war protester Bill Mitchell as he delivers a bouquet to her camp. Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, is camping out near President Bush's ranch to protest the president's Iraq policy AP
Posted on 08/11/2005 12:28:40 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Cindy Sheehan, right, hugs fellow war protester Bill Mitchell as he delivers a bouquet to her camp. Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, is camping out near President Bush's ranch to protest the president's Iraq policy AP
Vigil near Bush's ranch has drawn far more publicity than usual — and her share of critics
CRAWFORD - Cindy Sheehan has developed laryngitis from giving so many news media interviews. She has been forced to flee lightning, rainstorms and waterlogged ditches.
Nevertheless, the California woman whose son was killed in Iraq, and who is camping out near President Bush's ranch to protest the president's Iraq policy, is not complaining.
"This is beyond anybody's imagination," Sheehan said Wednesday of her sudden fame.
Sheehan has attracted national and international publicity — she also has developed a share of prominent critics — since arriving here Saturday and demanding to meet with the president to discuss the war that she believes is unjustified.
Protests near Bush's ranch are common. But Sheehan, with her questioning of whether her son died for the "noble cause" that Bush called the Iraq war a few days ago, has drawn far more attention than the usual protester.
Political analysts said Sheehan, 48, presents a sympathetic face during a war that polls show has become increasingly unpopular among Americans. Also, with Congress in recess, the Washington press corps is focused on events in Crawford during Bush's five-week stay.
Bush, who once met Sheehan at a reception with survivors of U.S. solders killed in Iraq, has not publicly acknowledged her presence near his Prairie Chapel Ranch.
Two of his policy aides met briefly with her after she led a protest rally Saturday, and now she is a magnet for an increasing number of visitors and expressions of support.
A caravan of people left from Houston Wednesday to join her roadside encampment near Waco.
Offers to provide her food and drink have poured in to help Sheehan maintain a vigil, which she vowed will last until the president agrees to see her or until his August stay here ends.
Some Swedes even donated portable toilets that were set up outside the Peace House here, which is run by liberal activists.
High-level meeting
The protest is expected to grow today as Bush meets at his ranch with his top foreign policy advisers, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to discuss Iraq and other issues.
Sheehan has been criticized by conservatives such as Fox television talk show host Bill O'Reilly, who accused her of changing her statements about Bush since last year and being manipulated by liberal activists.
Others such as Kathy Brooks, a counselor who ate at the Crawford Coffee Station on Wednesday, said that she understood Sheehan's grief but that the president is not to blame.
"The president did not make her son go," Brooks said. "He did have a choice."
Sheehan's oldest of four children, 24-year-old soldier Casey, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, in April 2004, five days after he arrived.
Carroll Dougherty, a pollster for the Pew Research Center, said that a combination of factors, including the deadly attacks in Iraq on Marines from Ohio, has given Sheehan's protest prominence.
"The public is really, really anxious about Iraq right now," he said.
Sheehan said she is helping to underscore the human sacrifices for a war that she contends the White House has tried to sanitize with practices such as, until recently, banning the release of photographs of flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers.
Sheehan accused the president Wednesday of "sending our children to die in a war that is illegal and immoral."
Less critical of president
In June 2004 however, after she and others who lost family members in Iraq met with Bush in Washington state, she was less critical of the president in an interview with her local newspaper, The Reporter, of Vacaville, Calif.
Bush is "sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis," she told the newspaper. "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."
Sheehan also said then that she had qualms about the war but decided not to raise them with the president out of respect for her son's death.
Sheehan explained Wednesday that she made the statements "in a deep state of shock and a deep state of grief," and has since learned more about the U.S. mission in Iraq.
She expressed exasperation that critics have pounced on the change in her statements about Iraq at a time when the president's initial rationale for the war, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, has proven untrue and that the president cites different reasons for the military remaining in that country.
Sheehan said she will allow herself to be arrested if authorities try to remove her her from her site about five miles from the presidential ranch.
However, an officer with the McLennan County Sheriff's Department said there are no plans to remove her and her supporters.
Although surprised at the attention she has garnered, Sheehan has developed media savvy with assistance from the national public relations firm Fenton Communications, which has also worked with MoveOn.org, the liberal group that campaigned against Bush last year.
And after saying she would camp out every night in her tent, Sheehan made an exception Monday when she stayed in a bed-and-breakfast to prepare for an interview the next morning with ABC News.
Some who have joined Sheehan say they made impulsive decisions to come here after learning about her protest on Web sites and other media.
Matt Rosine, 29, a minister at the First Colony Christian Church in Sugar Land, said since he had the day off Wednesday he decided to jump in his car and drive to Crawford.
"I wanted to meet her (Sheehan) and say 'way to go,' " he said.
But Larry Mattlage, who owns the farm across the road from where Sheehan and her supporters are encamped, was not pleased by the new visitors, who hung protest signs in the trees. Sitting on his parked tractor across the road, Mattlage said he supported the right to protest but that the demonstrators should not be allowed to stay for prolonged periods.
"In the morning I usually wake up and see the morning sun," he said. "Now I wake up to stuff hanging in trees."
Did you notice her comment about Saddam being "allowed" to fly the helicopters that gassed the Kurds? This woman was so ignorant that she doesn't know that Saddam did that before the Gulf War. Wow, what ajn expert on middle eastern affairs, I'm sure following her advice.
she would now maybe blog on michael moore's web site, because she though maybe O'Reilly was putting words in mm's mouth
I would bet that's a talking point. I've heard more than one liberal say that ("putting words in Moore's mouth") when a conservative mentions Moore's comments. I even recall one person who said that about the Minuteman comment.
Of course, if it's not a talking point, one has to wonder how low into the two digit range these people's IQs go, because it would mean they see this nasty person and just take him at his word solely because he shares their disagreement with Bush.
Not where it counts, it hasn't.
The MSN is irrelevant for the obvious reasons.
Among the moonbats, the "interest" peaked among all of them in the first 24 hours. All 15% of them
Among normal people, it's become a *yawn*...
I'll be at my rock pile, but I hope a lot of other folks show up for the Freep.
It burns me up that the media never mentions that, not only did her son enlist voluntarily, he reenlisted!
Just so. But of course it doesn't fit their marching orders which is, if they can't dig up any dirt on conservatives/Pubbies, they make their own. They have taken a less than non event and with their incessant carnival barking, turned it into a thing of beauty(in their eyes). Sortof like throw-down dirt if you will.
The three ring media circus' zeal is a something to behold, eh?
FGS
Satan certainly is making a stand here.
And the media will jump ship as soon as it's apparent that Cindy's story no longer holds water.
The FReeper you are attacking did not attribute a quote to Ms. Sheehan.
He also did not express any disregard for her 1st Amendment rights, or even suggest she curtail her speech.
Your question asking if he has sacrificed as much as her...I'm sorry, I didn't get the memo where the right to speak only applies to people who have buried a child killed in a foreign war. I thought it applied to all Americans.
But to take the cake...Posting the Golden Rule in defense of this woman who at best is a mouthpiece for human maggots who get fat off our honored dead is quite despicable. What's your take on Cindy Sheehan loving her son so much she'll dishonor the cause he fought for? What's your take on her loving her Neighbor GW Bush so much she lies about him, portraying him as a grinning ghoul when he really showed her family every kindness and respect? What's your take on her loving her Iraqi neighbor so much she demands to know what "noble cause" her son died in, apparently believing that liberating 25 million people from a torturocracy doesn't qualify as "noble." What's your take on her loving her neighbor the American soldier so much? Let's take just one group she has allied herself with--Code Pink. In just the last year they have done the following to the American soldiers who Casey Sheehan served with, and died trying to protect:
They have called them killers in numerous protests.
Every Friday night they protest the soldiers being wounded for oil mere yards from their sickbeds at Walter Reed.
They sent $600,000 to terrorists and terrorist sympathizers in Fallujah.
They endorse a statement/manifesto calling our soldiers' actions war crimes that require a Nuremburg-style tribunal. Note that this petition is also endorsed by another group of Sheehan-supporters, Veterans for Peace.
So take your own advice, and "Please refrain from engaging in personal attacks falsely leveled against a fellow citizen who dares to merely express via speech his opinion in America." Or at least get informed a bit about the kind of fifth-columnist scum Sheehan runs with.
Note: VFP has endorsed the World Tribunal statement, which advocates treating America's liberation of Iraq in the same legal manner the Holocaust was treated.
I have read around and now see that I was wrong to be charitable and assume that she was a grief-striken mother. She is a willing tool of the MSM and a shame on her family and country.
Some of the links on Sheehan's gold star website look really interesting and traitorous:
http://www.gsfp.org/
She's a LIBERAL activist.
If she was quiet we would all be much happier.
Isn't it ill-mannered an inappropriate to give an interview in a church in the middle of a prayer service? I wonder how the other people who were there mourning felt about this sacriligious act.
Note that she stopped when her own son was named. She probably would have been upset if the person next to her was chatting idly during that moment.
Of course, maybe nobody else was there.
You know, the more I think about this, the more it seems to me that she has already had her "honor" for the sacrifice of her son. Now she should be treated just like any other public figure protesting the war. We should be allowed to question her motives, to point out her false statements, and to judge her by the company she keeps.
There are protests in "solidarity" for her. What are the protesting about? The media sometimes says it is just for her "right" to speak with the president -- but there are millions of americans who would like to do that. She got her "meeting" because of her son's death. Now she should stand in line. Wouldn't every media personality want a one-on-one with the president?
If I were related to Rosa Parks, I would be upset. Rosa Parks was discriminated against her whole life. She took a stand for her own right to sit where she wanted to on a bus.
Cindy Sheehan is just a woman who wants to meet with the president. She already did it once, but she now wants a "do-over". Does the left really equate Cindy Sheehan not getting a 2nd meeting with the President with Rosa Parks putting her life in danger to sit on the front of a bus?
Where is the outrage of the black community?
Where to they make flag patches that are purposely backwards? Or is it just sewn on backwards? It doesn't look like the back of a patch to me.
How does disrespect for our country further their cause?
Are the mad at Bush, or at our country. They say Bush, but purposely wearing a flag backwards shows otherwise.
I hate seeing the flag displayed incorrectly. At least it isn't upside down.
That patch is the way the flag patches are currently produced, if you look at photos of soldiers you'll see the same thing.
Well, the reporter was kneeling too.....It's all such self-promoting, anti-American sewage.
Maybe she's following the usual Marxist materialism and now that her son's gone she sees him as a tool to be used.
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