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."
Cindy [Sheeham] and Amy Branham in front of the VFP Impeachment tour Bus Ms Sheehan's organization: Gold Star Families for Peace We are in the process of mobilizing support For Cindy Sheehan action in Crawford Texas Monetary donations are needed and can be sent to: Crawford Peace House P.O. Box 710218 Dallas, Tx. 75371-0218 Call John for bank wire info or use PayPal below
BUMP!
Any vigils planned for Philadelphia? I might have a little time on my hands tomorrow.
Just by happenstance while channel surfing, I happend upon that very show as well. Losing someone in a tsunami for several days only to have survived to tell about it is one thing, but her emotions on that particular show were way over-the-top. More recently, she did a show on "Cheating Husbands", giving the seven men a good tongue lashing talking to, ignoring the fact that women also cheat on their husbands as well. Oprah is overwrought with a cult-leader-like behavior.
It sounds like she took a tour. I have no information about Philadelphia.
***As Cindy Sheehan is interviewed by Univision’s reporter Xochitl Arellano, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan name is read aloud at Sacramento's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. When she hears her son's name Cindy Sheehan is overcome by emotion. Her hand covers her mouth, her eyes close in grief as her head turns down towards her son’s very own boots, she stops talking to Arellano.
Sheehan, 47 from Vacaville, and the reporter are kneeling down amid 171 empty boots representing the armed services personnel from California killed in the Iraq war. California is the state with most casualties in Iraq.
The rank, name, and birth state of the 1, 529 US service men and women killed continues to be read as part of the Eyes Wide Open exhibition. The names are read one by one along the names of the identified killed Iraqis. The process will last for hours.
After pausing for a few seconds Sheehan continues the interview, one of the very many she has given since a year ago her oldest son Casey was killed in Iraq.
This image of Sheehan unfortunately has become a familiar one for many of you. You might have seeing her at Good Morning America in inauguration day, you could have seen her watery eyes in a picture at the San Francisco Chronicle, or in the front cover of The Nation magazine, or perhaps you have seen her addressing the President on her election time TV ad for Moveon.org.
Arellano commented on the impression Sheehan caused on her. At first she didn’t know why, at the middle of the interview, she suddenly stopped talking, fighting tears. But then Sheehan explained her that her son’s name had just been read. Arellano said that she was emotionally moved when Casey Sheehan’s mother told her, “wars will stop when women are in power.”
Approaching the first anniversary of Casey’s death on April 4th 2004, Sheehan joined the traveling exhibit. Eyes Wide Open is both a public tribute to the American military personnel killed in Iraq as well as an exhibition on the human costs of the Iraq war.
The exhibit started January 2004 in Chicago with 504 boots representing US military casualties. When the boots reached Sacramento on March 29 this year the number was 1,529. ............***
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/05/1742719.php
Official wire Ny and virginia monthly have stories up on google about Cindy Sheehan.
In the virginia monthly she is cursing and saying she didn't pay taxes for 2004 and how all terrorism will end if u.s leaves iraq and israel leaves palestine.
In official wire ny she goes after pnac and israel again in a letter to nightline.
She is right out of code pink.
From Post #65:
***....You might have seeing her at Good Morning America in inauguration day, you could have seen her watery eyes in a picture at the San Francisco Chronicle, or in the front cover of The Nation magazine, or perhaps you have seen her addressing the President on her election time TV ad for Moveon.org. ....***
Yet ANOTHER agenda!
The cheating husbands show sound about as bad.
"Such thinking is rooted in a selfishness that only comes from a severe narcissistic personality disorder" you alleged against Ms. Sheehan.
Do you hold a M.D., Ph.D degree and have clinical experience in such matters, or is your phony quotation and instant diagnosis based upon same a selfish symptom of a severe narcissistic personality disorder?
Please refrain from engaging in personal attacks falsely leveled against a fellow citizen who dares to merely express via speech her opinion in America.
After all, she lost her son in combat while in contrast you will not honor her First Amendment rights. Have you given as much as she? Can't you give her a break? And wouldn't that be simply observing the great instruction rendered two-thousand years ago, love thy neighbor as thyself -- no exceptions?
May God Bless You.
Her son reenlisted but you wouldn't know it from this AP story.
***[AP]........Her 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, in April 2004 just five days after he arrived. Two months later, Sheehan was among grieving military family members who met with Bush at Fort Lewis, near Seattle, Wash.
Using her son's life insurance money, Sheehan has traveled around the country protesting Bush and the war, including at an October fundraising visit by Bush to St. Petersburg.
She said various government and independent commission reports have disputed the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had mass-killing chemical and biological weapons - a main justification for the March 2003 invasion.
On Wednesday, a coalition of antiwar groups in Washington called on Bush to speak with Sheehan.
"Cindy Sheehan has become the Rosa Parks of the antiwar movement," said the Rev. Lennox Yearwood, leader of the Hip Hop Caucus, an activist group. "She's tired, fed up and she's not going to take it anymore, and so now we stand with her."
Some veterans and relatives of those killed have called Sheehan's vigil a distraction and continue to support the U.S. military action in Iraq...........
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/11/Worldandnation/Mother_s_war_protest_.shtml
Amen to that. There is lots of details that the left omits in their hysterical desire to have it their way.
Egads! They've called in "The Elite Male-Ponytail Division"! Now their integrity cannot be questioned...
Check Post #18 to learn more about the ponytailed one.
Article Launched: 06/24/2004 06:00:00 AM
Bush, Sheehans share moments
By David Henson/Staff Writer
Since learning in April that their son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, had been killed in Iraq, life has been everything but normal for the Sheehan family of Vacaville.
Casey's parents, Cindy and Patrick, as well as their three children, have attended event after event honoring the soldier both locally and abroad, received countless letters of support and fielded questions from reporters across the country.
"That's the way our whole lives have been since April 4," Patrick said. "It's been surreal."
But none of that prepared the family for the message left on their answering machine last week, inviting them to have a face-to-face meeting with President George W. Bush at Fort Lewis near Seattle.
Surreal soon seemed like an understatement, as the Sheehans - one of 17 families who met Thursday with Bush - were whisked in a matter of days to the Army post and given the VIP treatment from the military. But as their meeting with the president approached, the family was faced with a dilemma as to what to say when faced with Casey's commander-in-chief.
"We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled," Cindy said. "The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached."
The 10 minutes of face time with the president could have given the family a chance to vent their frustrations or ask Bush some of the difficult questions they have been asking themselves, such as whether Casey's sacrifice would make the world a safer place.
But in the end, the family decided against such talk, deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act. In addition, Pat noted that Bush wasn't stumping for votes or trying to gain a political edge for the upcoming election.
"We have a lot of respect for the office of the president, and I have a new respect for him because he was sincere and he didn't have to take the time to meet with us," Pat said.
Sincerity was something Cindy had hoped to find in the meeting. Shortly after Casey died, Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture.
"I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis," Cindy said after their meeting. "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."
The meeting didn't last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.
While meeting with Bush, as well as Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, was an honor, it was almost a tangent benefit of the trip. The Sheehans said they enjoyed meeting the other families of fallen soldiers, sharing stories, contact information, grief and support.
For some, grief was still visceral and raw, while for others it had melted into the background of their lives, the pain as common as breathing. Cindy said she saw her reflection in the troubled eyes of each.
"It's hard to lose a son," she said. "But we (all) lost a son in the Iraqi war."
The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.
For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.
For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.
"That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together," Cindy said.
David Henson can be reached at schools@thereporter.com.
I guess the world, the war against terrorists and President Bush didn't revolve around Ms Cindy the way she wanted.
check out Cindy's latest rant
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1461117/posts
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