Cindy Sheehan: Commander In Grief

[thedrifter]

Borrowed from Mark aka The Fontman, my hubby...

CINDY SHEEHAN: COMMANDER IN GRIEF
by Ann Coulter
August 17, 2005

To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn.

Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn't have her own full-time PR flack. After your third profile on "Entertainment Tonight," you're no longer a grieving mom; you're a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show.

We're sorry about Ms. Sheehan's son, but the entire nation was attacked on 9/11. This isn't about her personal loss. America has been under relentless attack from Islamic terrorists for 20 years, culminating in a devastating attack on U.S. soil on 9/11. It's not going to stop unless we fight back, annihilate Muslim fanatics, destroy their bases, eliminate their sponsors and end all their hope. A lot more mothers will be grieving if our military policy is: No one gets hurt!

Fortunately, the Constitution vests authority to make foreign policy with the president of the United States, not with this week's sad story. But liberals think that since they have been able to produce a grieving mother, the commander in chief should step aside and let Cindy Sheehan make foreign policy for the nation. As Maureen Dowd said, it's "inhumane" for Bush not "to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

I'm not sure what "moral authority" is supposed to mean in that sentence, but if it has anything to do with Cindy Sheehan dictating America's foreign policy, then no, it is not "absolute." It's not even conditional, provisional, fleeting, theoretical or ephemeral.

The logical, intellectual and ethical shortcomings of such a statement are staggering. If one dead son means no one can win an argument with you, how about two dead sons? What if the person arguing with you is a mother who also lost a son in Iraq and she's pro-war? Do we decide the winner with a coin toss? Or do we see if there's a woman out there who lost two children in Iraq and see what she thinks about the war?

Dowd's "absolute" moral authority column demonstrates, once again, what can happen when liberals start tossing around terms they don't understand like "absolute" and "moral." It seems that the inspiration for Dowd's column was also absolute. On the rocks.

Liberals demand that we listen with rapt attention to Sheehan, but she has nothing new to say about the war. At least nothing we haven't heard from Michael Moore since approximately 11 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001. It's a neocon war; we're fighting for Israel; it's a war for oil; Bush lied, kids died; there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Turn on MSNBC's "Hardball" and you can hear it right now. At this point, Cindy Sheehan is like a touring company of Air America radio: Same old script and it's not even the original cast.

These arguments didn't persuade Hillary Clinton or John McCain to vote against the war. They didn't persuade Democratic primary voters, who unceremoniously dumped anti-war candidate Howard Dean in favor of John Kerry, who voted for the war before he voted against it. They certainly didn't persuade a majority of American voters who re-upped George Bush's tenure as the nation's commander in chief last November.

But now liberals demand that we listen to the same old arguments all over again, not because Sheehan has any new insights, but because she has the ability to repel dissent by citing her grief.

On the bright side, Sheehan shows us what Democrats would say if they thought they were immunized from disagreement. Sheehan has called President Bush "that filth-spewer and warmonger." She says "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started" and "the killing has gone on unabated for over 200 years." She calls the U.S. government a "morally repugnant system" and says, "This country is not worth dying for." I have a feeling every time this gal opens her trap, Michael Moore gets a residuals check.

Evidently, however, there are some things worth killing for. Sheehan recently said she only seemed calm "because if I started hitting something, I wouldn't stop 'til it was dead." It's a wonder Bush won't meet with her.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn
The Spectator ^ | 18 August 2005 | Mark Steyn
Hold your tears Mark Steyn

New Hampshire

Is it only five years since the White House press corps was spending its summers traipsing round Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons watching Bill Clinton hang with Carly Simon and Steven Spielberg? Since the Bush terror, alas, they’ve been condemned under a little-known provision of the Patriot Act to confinement in Crawford, Texas for one whole month a year. Crawford is where George W. Bush has his ranch and, other than that distinction, it is (as I wrote here in August 2000) ‘a dusty crossroads in the middle of a drought-stricken, sun-broiled plain, population 690 — with five churches but not a single hotel’. Since the annual influx of journalists, they may have added a hotel but also no doubt half a dozen more churches just to wind up the godless hordes of the Fourth Estate.

Sadly, the media don’t seem to enjoy the annual joke. So, with no showbiz types to hand in the Greater Waco area, someone had the bright idea of importing a little entertainment. These days, come August and the cry goes up, ‘Hey, let’s do the show in George W. Bush’s barn.’ When it comes to political theatre, Crawford now finds itself playing host to the nation’s most critically acclaimed summer stock.

Last year it was former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, who took up residence outside the Bush ranch and demanded the President come out and denounce the Swift Boat veterans. Cleland, also a Vietnam vet and a triple amputee, was outraged that anyone would impugn Senator Kerry’s war record and was impugning Bush for not impugning the Swift vets for impugning Kerry. Anyway, the President never did come out to meet Cleland. He may still be there for all I know.

This year’s performer in residence is Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq last year. Mrs Sheehan is now very anti-war and has pledged to stay camped out in Crawford all August until the President has the guts to come out and see her for a face-to-face meeting. So far he’s sent his national security adviser and deputy chief of staff out to see her, but that’s like Clinton sending Janet Reno and Sidney Blumenthal to Carly Simon’s party. These no-name stand-ins were trying to ‘bull**** us into submission,’ complained Mrs Sheehan.

Her son’s loss — like Max Cleland’s wounds — is supposed to put her beyond reproach. For as the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd informed us, ‘The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.’

Really? Well, what about those other parents who’ve buried children killed in Iraq? Linda Ryan lost her son, Marine Corporal Marc Ryan, to ‘insurgents’ in Ramadi: ‘George Bush didn’t kill her son,’ says Mrs Ryan. ‘Her son made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country.... George Bush was my son’s commander-in-chief. My son, Marc, totally believed in what he was doing.’

There are, sadly, hundreds of Linda Ryans across American: parents who buried children killed in Iraq and who honour their service to the nation. They don’t make the news. There’s one Cindy Sheehan and she’s on TV round the clock. She may not be emblematic of bereaved military families, but she’s certainly symbolic of media-Left desperation.

Still, she’s a mother. And, if you’re as heavily invested as Ms Dowd in the notion that those ‘killed in Iraq’ are ‘children’, then Mrs Sheehan’s status as grieving matriarch is a bonanza. I agree with Mrs Ryan: they’re not children in Iraq; they’re thinking adults who ‘made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country’. Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.

I get many emails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes as if she’s auditioning for a minor supporting role in Sex and the City. The infantilisation of the military promoted by the Left is deeply insulting to America’s warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd’s purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that ‘of course’ they ‘support our troops’, because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

So, when Cindy Sheehan came into view, Bush-disparagers from Washington to Hollywood cried ‘Bingo!’ ‘Cindy Sheehan is my hero,’ says Christine Lahti, former star of TV’s Chicago Hope. ‘You can run, Bush, but you can’t hide. Her courage is waking up America.’ Evidently it woke up motion-picture personality Viggo Mortensen, who flew to Crawford on a pilgrimage to Mrs Sheehan. For the press corps, it’s not exactly the Spielberg/Clinton summer summit in the Hamptons, but it’s as close as they’re going to get.

I resisted writing about ‘Mother Sheehan’ (as one leftie has proposed designating her), as it seemed obvious that she was at best a little unhinged by grief and at worst mentally ill. Start with her insistence on a face-to-face meeting with Bush. Even if you don’t think the President should see her, you can sympathise with the demand, born out of her anger and pain. But it turns out she’s already had a face-to-face meeting with Bush. Her son Casey was killed in April last year and in June the President met the Sheehans to offer his condolences. The story appeared in the 24 June 2004 edition of the Reporter, their hometown paper in Vacaville, California:

‘“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....”

continued......

[thedrifter]

‘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.’

Mrs Sheehan wants a second meeting with Bush because she no longer feels the way she did at the first one. Instead of gratitude for ‘the gift the President gave us’, she now says her son was ‘murdered by the Bush crime family’.

Also: ‘We have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog **** in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq.’

Also: ‘You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana.... You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine.’

Well, OK, cut the lady some slack: a lot of folks get a bit overheated about Bush, and neocons, and Jews and so forth. But how about this? ‘America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for.’ That was part of her warm-up act for a speech by Lynne Stewart, the ‘activist’ lawyer convicted of conspiracy for aiding the terrorists convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

You can see why Lynne’s grateful to Mrs Sheehan. But why is Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Kerry’s running mate, sending out imploring letters headlined ‘Support Cindy Sheehan’s Right To Be Heard’? The politics of this isn’t difficult: the more Cindy Sheehan is heard, the more obvious it is she’s a kook to whom most Americans would give a wide berth.

Don’t take my word for it, ask her family. Casey Sheehan’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins put out the following statement:

‘The Sheehan family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq war and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son’s good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect.’

Ah, well, they’re not immediate family, so they lack Cindy’s ‘moral authority’. But how about Casey’s father, Pat Sheehan? Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy’s ‘separation’: ‘Although she and her estranged husband are both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more radicalised.’

Toppling Saddam and the Taleban (Mrs Sheehan opposes US intervention in Afghanistan, too), destroying al-Qa’eda’s training camps and helping 50 million Muslims on the first steps to free societies aren’t worth the death of a single soldier. But Cindy Sheehan’s hatred of Bush is worth the death of her marriage. Watching her and her advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome on TV, I feel the way I felt about that mentally impaired Aussie concert pianist they got to play at the Oscars a few years ago.

It was suggested by the columnist Cal Thomas that Bush should agree to a (second) meeting — in public. Cindy Sheehan could let rip, but there would also be other bereaved moms of soldiers who don’t feel as she does, and maybe some bereaved Iraqi moms to tell of their gratitude for the liberation of their country from a psycho regime. It’s a fine idea, and I’m sure the reason Bush won’t do it is because he understands that Mrs Sheehan is having a mental breakdown in public and it would be cruel to take advantage of that. If only the Michael Moore Left had that much decency.

But in the wreckage of Pat and Cindy Sheehan’s marriage there is surely a lesson for the Democratic party. As Cindy says, they’re both Democrats, but she’s ‘more liberal’ and ‘more radicalised’. There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalised Dems out there: they’re soft-left-ish on healthcare and the environment and education and so forth; many have doubts about the war, but they love their country, they have family in the military, and they don’t believe in dishonouring American soldiers to make a political point. The problem for the Democratic party is that the Cindys are now the loudest voice: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, moveon.org, and Air America, the flailing liberal radio network distracting attention from its own financial scandals by flying down its afternoon host Randi Rhodes to do her show live from Camp Casey. The last time I heard Miss Rhodes she was urging soldiers called up for Iraq to refuse to go — i.e., to desert — and entertaining theories that 9/11 was Bush’s Reichstag fire.

On unwatched Sunday talk shows you can still stumble across the occasional sane responsible Dem. But, in the absence of any serious intellectual attempt to confront their long-term decline, all the energy on the Left is with the fringe. The Democratic party is a coalition of Pat Sheehans and Cindy Sheehans, and the noisier the Cindys get the more estranged the Pats are likely to feel. Sorry about that, but, if Mrs Sheehan can insist her son’s corpse be the determining factor in American policy on Iraq, I don’t see why her marriage can’t be a metaphor for the state of the Democratic party.

Casey Sheehan was a 21-year-old man when he enlisted in 2000. He re-enlisted for a second tour, and he died after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City. Mrs Sheehan says she wishes she’d driven him to Canada, though that’s not what he would have wished and it was his decision. As to whether he died in vain, the Associated Press reported this week:

‘The capital’s Sadr City section was once a hotbed of Shiite Muslim unrest, but it has become one of the brightest successes for the US security effort. So far this year, there has been only one car bombing in the neighborhood, and only one American soldier has been killed.’

Cindy Sheehan is a woman whose grief has curdled into a narcissistic rage, and the Democrats cheering her on are cheering their own marginalisation. Most Americans will not follow where she’s gone — to the wilder shores of anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Iraq, anti-Afghanistan, anti-Israel, anti-American paranoia. Casey Sheehan’s service was not the act of a child. A shame you can’t say the same about his mom’s new friends.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Moms mixed on protest
By COURTNEY DENTCH
The Intelligencer

Cindy Sheehan's anti-war protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch has been a hot topic of conversation around the Badmann household in Horsham.

A California woman who lost her son in Iraq is demanding a meeting with the commander in chief and has set up camp on the road to his Crawford ranch since Aug. 5.

Since then, Cynthia Badmann has been debating the vigil with her husband and daughter. Her 31-year-old son, Ralph, is a gunnery sergeant with the Marines and was with one of the first units to land in Iraq when the war began.

"I think he should meet with her," Badmann said. "He is the military's commander in chief and their boss. Out of respect for her and her son he should talk to her."

Sheehan, 48, of Vacaville, Calif., has been demanding a meeting with Bush to talk about her son, Casey A. Sheehan, an Army specialist who was killed near Baghdad in April 2004. Sheehan did meet with Bush soon after her son was killed, but her grief was too fresh to discuss the things she wanted.

"I want to let the president know that I feel he recklessly endangered the life of my son by sending our troops to attack and occupy a country that was no imminent threat to the United States," Sheehan wrote in an article for the Progressive Media Project. "And I want to let him know that millions of Americans believe that the best thing we can do - for our own security, for our soldiers and for the Iraqi people - is to bring the U.S. troops home from Iraq now."

Some military moms in the area disagree and stand firmly behind their sons' decisions to join the service. Martina Obenski's son, Sgt. Bryson Obenski, 24, is eight months into his third tour in Iraq.

"It's tough. I do feel her pain, but I don't support her idea," said Obenski, who is a risk manager at St. Luke's Hospital in Quakertown. "There's really no mother's manual to guide you on your emotions on this."

Quakertown resident Wendy Kelly, whose son Pat started boot camp in July, believes Sheehan's protest is a part of her grieving process.

"I lost my husband, and I know the pain she is going through," Kelly said. "I wish President Bush would, instead of doing the politically correct thing, I wish he would do the human thing and talk to her."

But Obenski said the president should not be held hostage by the sit-in.

"If you fall into pandering to every protester who sets up on your lawn, it'll never end."

Marine Sgt. Joe Raiker of Warrington said Sheehan should respect her son's choice to serve his country and appreciate that his death will be remembered. "His life's going to go down in the history of the United States," he said. "His legacy lives on among the people still joining today."

Raiker, who repairs aircraft at the Willow Grove Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base, served in Iraq from March 2003, when the war started, until May of that year. He said the war was well chosen, even if reports of the existence of weapons of mass destruction proved "not so good."

"People welcomed us," said Raiker, 39. "Frankly, the whole region wanted Saddam Hussein out of power."

And those men and women who chose to serve are fighting for the rest of the country, Badmann said.

"The young man who lost his life did die for the rest of us, so that we could go to work and go down the shore," she said.

It doesn't ease a mother's anxiety, though.

"Unfortunately, in war you're going to lose somebody," Obenski said. "You pray it's not going to be someone you know and love. I'm holding my breath every day."

Pamela Batzel contributed to this story.

Courtney Dentch can be reached at (215) 538-6369 or cdentch@phillyBurbs.com.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

She Does Not Speak for Me
My son died in Iraq--and it was not in vain.
BY RONALD R. GRIFFIN
Thursday, August 18, 2005 12:01 a.m.

I lost a son in Iraq and Cindy Sheehan does not speak for me.

I grieve with Mrs. Sheehan, for all too well I know the full measure of the agony she is forever going to endure. I honor her son for his service and sacrifice. However, I abhor all that she represents and those who would cast her as the symbol for parents of our fallen soldiers.

The fallen heroes, until now, have enjoyed virtually no individuality. They have been treated as a monolith, a mere number. Now Mrs. Sheehan, with adept public relations tactics, has succeeded in elevating herself above the rest of us. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida declared that Mrs. Sheehan is now the symbol for all parents who have lost children in Iraq. Sorry, senator. Not for me.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times portrays Mrs. Sheehan as a distraught mom standing heroically outside the guarded gates of the most powerful and inhumane man on earth, President Bush. Ms. Dowd is so moved by Mrs. Sheehan's plight that she bestowed upon her and all grieving parents the title of "absolute moral authority." That characterization epitomizes the arrogance and condescension of anyone who would presume to understand and speak for all of us. How can we all possess "absolute moral authority" when we hold so many different perspectives?

I don't want that title. I haven't earned that title.

Although we all walk the same sad road of sorrow and agony, we walk it as individuals with all the refreshing uniqueness of our own thoughts shaped in large measure by the life and death of our own fallen hero. Over the past few days I have reached out to other parents and loved ones of fallen heroes in an attempt to find out their reactions to all the attention Mrs. Sheehan has attracted. What emerges from those conversations is an empathy for Mrs. Sheehan's suffering but a fundamental disagreement with her politics.

Ann and Dale Hampton lost their only child, Capt. Kimberly Hampton, on Jan. 2, 2004, while she was flying her Kiowa helicopter. She was a member of the 82nd Airborne and the company commander. She had already served in Afghanistan before being deployed to Iraq. Ann Hampton wrote, "My grief sometimes seems unbearable, but I cannot add the additional baggage of anger. Mrs. Sheehan has every right to protest . . . but I cannot do that. I would be protesting the very thing that Kimberly believed in and died for."

Marine Capt. Benjamin Sammis was Stacey Sammis's husband. Ben died on April 4, 2003, while flying his Super Cobra helicopter. Listen to Stacey and she will tell you that she is just beginning to understand the enormousness of the character of soldiers who knowingly put their lives at risk to defend our country. She will tell you that one of her deepest regrets is that the world did not have the honor of experiencing for a much longer time this outstanding Marine she so deeply loved.

Speak to Joan Curtin, whose son, Cpl. Michael Curtin, was an infantryman with the 2-7th 3rd ID, and her words are passionately ambivalent. She says she has no room for bitterness. She has a life to lead and a family to nurture. She spoke of that part of her that never heals, for that is where Michael resides. She can go on, always knowing there will be that pain.

Karen Long is the mother of Spc. Zachariah Long, who died with my son Kyle on May 30, 2003. Zack and Kyle were inseparable friends as only soldiers can be, and Karen and I have become inseparable friends since their deaths. Karen's view is that what Mrs. Sheehan is doing she has every right to do, but she is dishonoring all soldiers, including Karen's son, Zack. Karen cannot comprehend why Mrs. Sheehan cannot seem to come to grips with the idea that her own son, Casey, was a soldier like Zack who had a mission to complete. Karen will tell you over and over again that Zack is not here and no one, but no one will dishonor her son.

My wife, Robin, has a different take on Mrs. Sheehan. She told me, "I don't care what she says or does. She is no more important than any other mother."

By all accounts Spc. Casey Sheehan, Mrs. Sheehan's son, was a soldier by choice and by the strength of his character. I did not have the honor of knowing him, but I have read that he attended community college for three years and then chose to join the Army. In August 2003, five months into Operation Iraqi Freedom and after three years of service, Casey Sheehan re-enlisted in the Army with the full knowledge there was a war going on, and with the high probability he would be assigned to a combat area. Mrs. Sheehan frequently speaks of her son in religious terms, even saying that she thought that some day Casey would be a priest. Like so many of the individuals who have given their lives in service to our country, Casey was a very special young man. How do you decry that which someone has chosen to do with his life? How does a mother dishonor the sacrifice of her own son?

Mrs. Sheehan has become the poster child for all the negativity surrounding the war in Iraq. In a way it heartens me to have all this attention paid to her, because that means others in her position now have the chance to be heard. Give equal time to other loved ones of fallen heroes. Feel the intensity of their love, their pride and the sorrow.

To many loved ones, there are few if any "what ifs." They, like their fallen heroes before them, live in the world as it is and not what it was or could have been. Think of the sacrifices that have brought us to this day. We as a country made a collective decision. We must now live up to our decision and not deviate until the mission is complete.

Thirty-five years ago, a president faced a similar dilemma in Vietnam. He gave in and we got "peace with honor." To this day, I am still searching for that honor. Today, those who defend our freedom every day do so as volunteers with a clear and certain purpose. Today, they have in their commander in chief someone who will not allow us to sink into self-pity. I will not allow him to. The amazing part about talking to the people left behind is that I did not want them to stop. After speaking to so many I have come away with the certainty of their conviction that in a large measure it's because of the deeds and sacrifices of their fallen heroes that this is a better and safer world we now live in.

Those who lost their lives believed in the mission. To honor their memory, and because it's right, we must believe in the mission, too.

We refuse to allow Cindy Sheehan to speak for all of us. Instead, we ask you to learn the individual stories. They are glorious. Honor their memories.

Honor their service. Never dishonor them by giving in. They never did.

Mr. Griffin is the father of Spc. Kyle Andrew Griffin, a recipient of the Army Commendation Medal, Army Meritorious Service Medal and the Bronze Star, who was killed in a truck accident on a road between Mosul and Tikrit on May 30, 2003.

Ellie

[yellowwing]

Geez-left right and center are giving her a lot of exposure. From Coulter to MoveOn. They can't get enough of her.

[003XXMarineDAD]

This is the push the mainstream media wants to go with to get the peace with out honor they want. The mainstream media wants to see the country cut and run so they can say we told you so.

[Phantom Blooper]

'Peace Mom' Leaves Camp, Her Mother Ill
August 18, 2005 5:23 PM EDT
CRAWFORD, Texas - The grieving woman who started an anti-war demonstration near President Bush's ranch nearly two weeks ago left the camp Thursday after learning her mother had had a stroke, but she told supporters the protest would go on.

Cindy Sheehan told reporters she had just received the phone call and was leaving immediately to be with her 74-year-old mother at a Los Angeles hospital.

"I'll be back as soon as possible if it's possible," she said. After hugging some of her supporters, Sheehan and her sister, Deedee Miller, got in a van and left for the Waco airport about 20 miles away.

Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son Casey died in Iraq, said the makeshift campsite off the road leading to Bush's ranch would continue.

The camp has grown to more than 100 people, including many relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq. After Sheehan left, dozens of the demonstrators gathered under a canopy to pray for her mother.

Sheehan, of Vacaville, Calif., had vowed to remain at the camp until Bush met with her or until his monthlong vacation ended.

Her protest inspired candlelight vigils across the country Wednesday night, and she has drawn sympathy for the loss of her son, which says tore apart her marriage as well.

Bush has also said he sympathizes with Sheehan. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said earlier Thursday that the president said Sheehan had a right to protest but that he did not plan to change his schedule and meet with her. Bush is scheduled to return to Washington on Sept. 3.

Two top Bush administration officials talked to Sheehan the day she started her camp, and she and other families met with Bush shortly after her son's death and before she became a vocal opponent of the war.

Michelle Mulkey, a spokeswoman for Sheehan, said Sheehan hoped to be back in Texas within 24 to 48 hours. Mulkey said Sheehan's mother, Shirley Miller, was in a hospital emergency room and Sheehan didn't yet know how serious her condition was.

Sheehan and the other demonstrators have camped in ditches along the road to Bush's ranch since Aug. 6. After complaints from some neighbors, they planned to start moving the camp site Thursday and Friday to a private one-acre lot owned by Fred Mattlage, who opposes the war and offered his property to give them more room and safety.

FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and Sen. Becky Lourey, a Minnesota lawmaker whose son died in Iraq, were expected to join the demonstrators later Thursday.

[Joseph P Carey]

Did anyone happen to mention that this soldier re-upped for duty in Iraq? That the husband of this woman, and father of the soldier, has filed for dicvorce from her over this stunt she is pulling. And, does it really mean nothing that the President of the United States talked with her once already, last year, about this issue. The fact remains that she did not have a close relationship with her son, and this is more about her guilty consciense than it is about the war, or even the death of her son?

Note: No photos of her son and her together being flashed in the media, because there are none! The woman is as big a fraud as John Kerry!

[CAR]

I won't speak to the relationship of the mother to her son but on the rest, your right JPC. NO media mentions that they have already met. Now her story is different. The first time she met she said the Pres was courtious, really cared and sympathetic, NOW after all this crap she claims that he came in just about laughing and as if he didn't care one bit. HMMMM

Are we to really believe that the presidents demeanor changed? This woman has disgraced her son. He volunteered to serve and believed in what he was fighting for. She belittles his sacrifice with all the same ole, retoric that the loons have been spewing for years now.

May her son's soul find rest, I pitty this women, I have no respect for her. Shame on her for using her son's honor for her agenda.

[thedrifter]

Borrowed from Mark aka The Fontman <br />
<br />
What Do They Expect? Cindy’s Protest Generates Hostility from Vietnam Vet <br />
By Will Malven <br />
<br />
Larry Chad Northern, a 59-year-old Speegleville, Texas resident was...

[Wyoming]

"She Does Not Speak for Me"
A powerful, moving article by Ronald R. Griffin, whose son Kyle was killed in Iraq.

Mrs. Sheehan has become the poster child for all the negativity surrounding the war in Iraq. In a way it heartens me to have all this attention paid to her, because that means others in her position now have the chance to be heard. Give equal time to other loved ones of fallen heroes. Feel the intensity of their love, their pride and the sorrow.

To many loved ones, there are few if any “what ifs.” They, like their fallen heroes before them, live in the world as it is and not what it was or could have been. Think of the sacrifices that have brought us to this day. We as a country made a collective decision. We must now live up to our decision and not deviate until the mission is complete.

Thirty-five years ago, a president faced a similar dilemma in Vietnam. He gave in and we got “peace with honor.” To this day, I am still searching for that honor. Today, those who defend our freedom every day do so as volunteers with a clear and certain purpose. Today, they have in their commander in chief someone who will not allow us to sink into self-pity. I will not allow him to. The amazing part about talking to the people left behind is that I did not want them to stop. After speaking to so many I have come away with the certainty of their conviction that in a large measure it’s because of the deeds and sacrifices of their fallen heroes that this is a better and safer world we now live in.

Those who lost their lives believed in the mission. To honor their memory, and because it’s right, we must believe in the mission, too.

We refuse to allow Cindy Sheehan to speak for all of us. Instead, we ask you to learn the individual stories. They are glorious. Honor their memories.

Honor their service. Never dishonor them by giving in. They never did.

[thedrifter]

Sheehan's Departure Won't Deter Protesters on Either Side
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
August 19, 2005

(CNSNews.com) -- Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan calls her mother's stroke a "devastating blow" that has forced her to leave "Camp Casey" temporarily.

She left Crawford, Tex., on Thursday to be by her mother's side, but in a message posted on Michael Moore's website, Sheehan said while she's gone, her fellow protesters will "keep up the pressure on the president to meet with us and answer questions about the war."

Sheehan said her 74-year-old mother was rushed to the emergency room of a Los Angeles hospital Thursday afternoon.

Patricia Vogel of the anti-war group Military Families Speak Out also issued a statement, saying, "We needed Cindy to start this movement and now Cindy needs us to keep it going. We are staying in Crawford until we get answers, or until the president completes his five-week vacation."

(Vogel's son, Aaron, has served in Iraq and may be re-deployed, the statement says.)

On Friday, protesters plan to gather near President Bush's ranch plan to hold a prayer service, including a moment of silence for "the military serving around the world, those who have given their lives in combat, and their loved ones."

The protesters - about 100 of them have gathered, according to press reports -- have invited President Bush to attend the prayer meeting, but he is not expected to do so.

A White House spokeswoman on Thursday quoted the president as saying that Sheehan has a right to protest but that he does not plan to meet with her again. He did hold a brief, private meeting with Sheehan last year, about two months after her son Casey died in Iraq, at a gathering including other military families.

Sympathy for Cindy?

Of the three liberal advocacy groups that have rallied around Cindy Sheehan in recent days -- MoveOn.or, TrueMajority and Democracy for America - not a single one's website mentioned Sheehan's departure from Camp Casey or offered any expression of sympathy for her as of early Friday morning -- more than 12 hours after Sheehan's departure from Camp Casey.

All three websites, however, boasted that some 100,000 people took part in more than 1,600 candlelight (anti-war) vigils on Wednesday night.

Michael Moore's website - which is posting Cindy's diary entries -- did mention her departure from Camp Casey, saying, \ldblquote Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family..."

Pro-military protest will go on

A group that supports U.S. troops and their mission in Iraq says it's "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" tour will continue as planned, despite Cindy Sheehan's departure from Crawford.

Move America Forward has made the following statement regarding news of Cindy Sheehan's temporary departure from her anti-war vigil in Crawford, Texas:

"We are sorry to learn of the illness facing Cindy Sheehan's mother, Move America Forward Chairman Melanie Morgan said in a statement.

"The issue here is the fact that the servicemembers and their families have not had their voices heard during the past weeks of Ms. Sheehan's vigil. They support the troops and the mission they are serving in.

"We are going to bring that voice to Crawford, Texas -- and we invite people from around the nation to join our caravan and meet us for the super rally in Crawford, Texas, on Saturday, August 27," Morgan said in a message to supporters.

[thedrifter]

Moral authority on a slippery slope
Jonathan Chait
August 19, 2005

WE ARE LIVING in an age of moral authority. It's not the strength of the argument that matters, it's the strength of the arguer. Nobody has exploited this more effectively than Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen Iraq war soldier, who took command of the national agenda by camping outside President Bush's ranch and demanding to meet with him.

Everybody, of course, ought to feel horrible for Sheehan, and to honor her son's bravery. But Sheehan's supporters don't just want us to sympathize with her. They believe that her loss gives her views on the Iraq war more sway than the views of the rest of us. As Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times, "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

The right's response is equally telling. For the most part, conservatives are not arguing that Sheehan's tragedy tells us nothing about the merits of her views on Iraq. Instead they are trying to discredit her as inauthentic, a Michael Moore pal who left her 2004 meeting with Bush pleased and grateful. As Rush Limbaugh declared, "Her story is nothing more than forged documents."

The conservative counterattack is pathetic. (The family did not voice its objections to the handling of the war in its meeting with Bush in deference to the occasion, according to a news article.) But aside from the dark comedy of the conservative machine going negative on a grieving mother, the mere fact of the response suggests that the right has bought into the premise peddled by Sheehan and her supporters: If Sheehan is a genuine war mother radicalized by her son's death, then that is somehow an indictment of Bush and his policies.

One of the important ideas of a democratic culture is that we all have equal standing in the public square. That doesn't mean stupid ideas should be taken as seriously as smart ones. It means that the content of an argument should be judged on its own merits.

The left seems to be embracing the notion of moral authority in part as a tactical response to the right. For years, conservatives have said or implied that if you criticize a war, you hate the soldiers. During the Clinton years, conservatives insisted that the president lacked "moral authority" to send troops into battle because he had avoided the draft as a youth or, later, because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

So adopting veterans or their mourning parents as spokesmen is an understandable counter-tactic. It was a major part of the rationale behind John Kerry's candidacy. The trouble is, plenty of liberals have come to believe their own bleatings about moral authority. Liberal blogs are filled with attacks on "chicken hawk" conservatives who support the war but never served in the military. A recent story in the antiwar magazine Nation attacked my New Republic editor, Peter Beinart, a supporter of the Iraq war, for having "no national security experience," as if Nation editors routinely served in the Marine Corps.

The silliness of this argument is obvious. There are parents of dead soldiers on both sides. Conservatives have begun trotting out their own this week. What does this tell us about the virtues or flaws of the war? Nothing.

Or maybe liberals think that having served in war, or losing a loved one in war, gives you standing to oppose wars but not to support them. The trouble is, any war, no matter how justified, has a war hero or relative who opposes it.

Sheehan also criticizes the Afghanistan war. One of the most common (and strongest) liberal indictments of the Iraq war is that it diverted troops that could have been deployed against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Are liberals who make that case, yet failed to enlist themselves, chicken hawks too?

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Grieving mother stands up for US soldiers in Iraq
20.08.05
By Rupert Cornwell

Something strange is taking place deep in the heart of Texas, where the President of the United States is holed up at his Prairie Chapel ranch, a few miles from the town of Crawford.

There, in the space of a few days, a middle-aged Californian, whose soldier son died in Iraq, has become arguably the best-known woman in the US.

On one level, the attention generated by 48-year-old Cindy Sheehan - from the hitherto obscure town of Vacaville, an hour's drive north-east of San Francisco - merely proves the old adage that, like nature, the news business cannot tolerate a vacuum.

Obedient to the tradition that the US President must be covered 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (including holidays), dozens of White House reporters are having to spend this sweltering August on the plains of central Texas as George W. Bush takes his customary extended summer holiday.

Normally, hard news barely extends beyond barbecue fund raisers, a few minutely choreographed but content-free trips to "meet ordinary Americans", and the odd presidential excursion to a little league baseball game. This year, however, manna has descended in the desert for the media mini-horde.

What started as a one-woman protest has turned into a metaphor for a country's growing disillusion at an increasingly unwinnable war.

Sheehan - personable, sincere, articulate, and bereaved of a son - has turned into the human face of this disillusion.

The Lone Star State, too, has been contributing an extra dash of colour - most notably when Larry Mattlage, a farmer who rents his land to networks for a view of the President's 647ha spread, fired his shotgun twice into the air, sending reporters into a frenzy and an ever-nervous presidential secret service into apoplexy.

He claimed he was merely warming up for the dove-hunting season.

But in the next breath Mattlage made clear the real source of his exasperation - Sheehan's camp, which is now into its second week.

Yesterday she rushed to the bedside of her mother who had a stroke, though she vowed to return for the remainder of the President's holiday.

But her "camp-in" is anything but a hollow summer stunt. Never has the Iraq war been so unpopular.

Most Americans now think the US-led invasion of 2003 was a mistake, and by a margin of almost two to one disapprove of Bush's handling of it. Like Sheehan, they want some or all of the 138,000 US troops in Iraq brought home, and soon.

Even Republicans are becoming queasy at the implications for next year's mid-term elections, if the present bloodshed continues.

Even conservative talk-show hosts such as Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, normally a reliable cheerleader for the Administration, have become withering in criticism of Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary.

Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in a firefight when his unit was attacked by Shiite militias south of Baghdad on April 4 last year, just a fortnight after he arrived in Iraq.

When he died, the public mood about the war was starting to waver, but was still broadly supportive. That is no longer the case.

The loss of 14 Marines in the roadside bombing near Haditha on August 3 - the deadliest incident yet of its kind - brought home as never before the relentlessly rising cost of a conflict in which almost 1850 US soldiers have died.

Three days after Haditha, Cindy Sheehan set up camp at a junction in the road 7km south of the President's ranch - as near as the Secret Service would permit.

As the national media latched on to the story, "Camp Casey" grew.

By Sunday evening more than 100 people were camped there, including some who had driven more than 2600km. A few have left, but others have arrived to take their place. For several hours during the day, numbers were swollen by hundreds of anti-war protesters.

Small white crosses bearing the names of dead soldiers make an impromptu roadside shrine. Banners have sprouted on the trees, while supporters across the country send daily consignments of flowers.

Portable toilets give a temporary permanence to the scene - as have the local police officers urging sightseers to move on. At least one celebrity has shown up too - Viggo Mortensen of The Lord of the Rings.

As public attention has grown, Sheehan's protest has acquired a highly professional veneer. She is a co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, an anti-war group that has demanded the impeachment of Bush, and is no media neophyte. A Washington public relations firm is on the spot to co-ordinate and maximise press coverage.

On Saturday - the day after Bush's motorcade swept past Camp Casey without stopping, en route to a fundraiser for Texas Republicans Gold Star Families even spent US$15,000 ($21,400) on a television commercial.

In the ad, Sheehan declares: "All I wanted was an hour out of his extended vacation time, but he's refused to meet with me and other military families. We just want honest answers."

Joe Trippi, the 2004 presidential campaign manager of Howard Dean, has organised pro-Cindy blogs, while Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11 and a professional anti-Bush agitator, has devoted his website to the cause.

The stakes are growing, and Bush's supporters are mounting a counter offensive. Across the road from Sheehan and her followers, more than 200 supporters of the President staged their own rally on Sunday, holding signs branding Sheehan a traitor.

O'Reilly's diatribes against Rumsfeld have not stopped him labelling her "treasonous" while others have seized upon divisions within the Sheehan family.

Sheehan and her husband separated because of their differences over the war and her increasing activism after Casey's death.

Last week, some of her in-laws issued a bitter statement accusing Sheehan of "promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name". Other opponents have said she did indeed meet Bush, in June 2004, and seemed satisfied with the encounter.

So why, they ask, has she suddenly changed her tune, accusing the President of being callous and uncaring when he met her? Sheehan explains that her judgement a year ago was still blinded by grief. The argument is squalid and demeaning. But it is a sign of just how nasty this fight may yet become.

In public, the White House is hoping to ride out the embarrassment.

The day after Sheehan arrived, it sent out Stephen Hadley, the President's national security adviser to talk to her. She described the meeting as "pointless". But the White House thinks it has done enough.

Bush last week said he had thought "long and hard" about Sheehan's position, but has not indicated he will bow to her demand for a face-to-face session - at least not in circumstances that smack of a media circus.

Whether this strategy succeeds depends on events. A PR battle with a grieving mother who has lost a son in a controversial war and who comes across well on television is one no president would relish.

On the other hand, even a White House press corps with little else to report may become bored.

Perhaps some new crisis will sweep Camp Casey off the front pages. Or an encampment of war supporters may sprout forth, as a rival focus for the media.

Perhaps the growing professionalism of the movement will cause the public to see it as just another political campaign.

On the other hand, another Haditha might transform Sheehan's protest into a national movement. If a few dozen more US servicemen die, more Americans will wonder why their soldiers are dying in Iraq at the hands of an insurgency that seems to draw strength and inspiration from the US military presence.

Bush's ratings would decline further, and Camp Casey might go down in history as the moment when this President lost America and, with it, his war.

Cindy Sheehan herself is under few illusions about the limits of her mission.

"Something might happen and this won't be the story anymore," she admits. "But I don't want this to end. Ending the war is the story."

- INDEPENDENT

Ellie

[thedrifter]

'Peace Mom's' marriage a metaphor for Dems
August 21, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Cindy Sheehan's son Casey died in Sadr City last year, and that fact is supposed to put her beyond reproach. For as the New York Times' Maureen Dowd informed us: ''The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

Really? Well, what about those other parents who've buried children killed in Iraq? There are, sadly, hundreds of them: They honor their loved ones' service to the nation, and so they don't make the news. There's one Cindy Sheehan, and she's on TV 'round the clock. Because, if you're as heavily invested as Dowd in the notion that those "killed in Iraq" are "children," then Sheehan's status as grieving matriarch is a bonanza.

They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.

I get many e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes like she's auditioning for a minor supporting role in ''Sex And The City.''

The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that "of course" they "support our troops," because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

I resisted writing about "Mother Sheehan" (as one leftie has proposed designating her), as it seemed obvious that she was at best a little unhinged by grief and at worst mentally ill. It's one thing to mourn a son's death and even to question the cause for which he died, but quite another to roar that he was "murdered by the Bush crime family."

Also: "You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana . . . You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine."

And how about this? "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for." That was part of her warm-up act for a speech by Lynne Stewart, the "activist" lawyer convicted of conspiracy for aiding the terrorists convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

You can see why Lynne's grateful to Sheehan. But why is Elizabeth Edwards sending out imploring letters headlined "Support Cindy Sheehan's Right To Be Heard"? The politics of this isn't difficult: The more Cindy Sheehan is heard the more obvious it is she's thrown her lot in with kooks most Americans would give a wide berth to.

Don't take my word for it, ask her family. Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins put out the following statement:

"The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect."

Ah, well, they're not immediate family, so they lack Cindy's "moral authority." But how about Casey's father, Pat Sheehan? Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Casey's father Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy's "separation," "Although she and her estranged husband are both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more radicalized."

Toppling Saddam and the Taliban (Mrs. Sheehan opposes U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, too), destroying al-Qaida's training camps and helping 50 million Muslims on the first steps to free societies aren't worth the death of a single soldier. But Cindy Sheehan's hatred of Bush is worth the death of her marriage. Watching her and her advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome on TV, I feel the way I felt about that mentally impaired Aussie concert pianist they got to play at the Oscars a few years.

Yet in the wreckage of Pat and Cindy Sheehan's marriage there is surely a lesson for the Democratic Party. As Cindy says, they're both Democrats, but she's "more liberal" and "more radicalized." There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalized Dems out there: They're soft-left-ish on health care and the environment and education and so forth; many have doubts about the war, but they love their country, they have family in the military, and they don't believe in dishonoring American soldiers to make a political point. The problem for the Democratic Party is that the Cindys are now the loudest voice: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, Moveon.org, and Air America, the flailing liberal radio network distracting attention from its own financial scandals by flying down its afternoon host Randi Rhodes to do her show live from Camp Casey. The last time I heard Miss Rhodes she was urging soldiers called up for Iraq to refuse to go -- i.e., to desert.

On unwatched Sunday talk shows, you can still stumble across the occasional sane, responsible Dem. But, in the absence of any serious intellectual attempt to confront their long-term decline, all the energy on the left is with the fringe. The Democratic Party is a coalition of Pat Sheehans and Cindy Sheehans, and the noisier the Cindys get the more estranged the Pats are likely to feel.

Sorry about that, but, if Mrs. Sheehan can insist her son's corpse be the determining factor in American policy on Iraq, I don't see why her marriage can't be a metaphor for the state of the Democratic Party.

Casey Sheehan was a 21-year old man when he enlisted in 2000. He re-enlisted for a second tour, and he died after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City. Mrs. Sheehan says she wishes she'd driven him to Canada, though that's not what he would have wished, and it was his decision.

His mother has now left Crawford, officially because her mother has had a stroke, but promising to return. I doubt she will. Perhaps deep down she understands she's a woman whose grief curdled into a narcissistic rage, and most Americans will not follow where she's gone -- to the wilder shores of anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Iraq, anti-Afghanistan, anti-Israel, anti-American paranoia. Casey Sheehan's service was not the act of a child. A shame you can't say the same about his mom's new friends.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Sheehan Is Believing <br />
By James Bowman <br />
Published 8/22/2005 12:07:50 AM <br />
<br />
<br />
Now that Cindy Sheehan, the &quot;Peace Mom&quot; -- or even &quot;Mother Peace&quot; (as fawning Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has it)...

[Sgt Sostand]

The War in IraQ was uncall for but the War in Afghanistan was on target. unless we wanted IraQ Oil

[yellowwing]

I'm not sure if President Bush did give her 15 minutes if she would go home and be quiet.

Fer Christsakes, we are in Iraq like it or not. We can't just cut and run. No Marine has a cut and run attitude.

[Sgt Sostand]

Its not about just cut and run it about telling the American people the truth hell i never run from a Good Fight i only know one cut and that cut and shoot............but then again i dont want to die for nothing

[thedrifter]

http://www.iowapresidentialwatch.com/images/cartoons/YDSFMC.Lg.JPG

[thedrifter]

Cindy and the Pacifrauds
August 24th, 2005
James Lewis

Samuel Johnson famously said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and he was right --- in 1775. But that was long before the rise of the Left. Today, patriotism is treated with contempt. If Dr. Johnson were alive today, he would see pacifism as the last resort of scoundrels.

The Cindy Sheehan soap opera near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, was a classic example of agitprop - Lenin's term for "agitation and propaganda," that still provides the basic playbook for the Left. The intellectual substance of the Cindy drama is near zilch - a grieving mother who translates her rage into a political stunt, to the delighted cheers of our mainstream media. For every Cindy Sheehan there are untold thousands of mothers and fathers who have not chosen display their pain in public, or to use it for political ends. There is nothing in Mrs. Sheehan's words that cannot be found in Michael Moore. It is pure propaganda.

Ever since Marx and Lenin, the Left has had a monopoly on "peace" - if one defines "peace" as the extermination of the bourgeoisie and the spread of Gulags to the whole world. But by those standards Osama Bin Laden is also a pacifist. After all, to Bin Laden and his gang, the lands of Sharia are "Dharb al Salam" - "the house of peace" - in which homosexuals deserve public execution, family honor requires women to be stabbed to death for flirting, and Christians and Jews are subjected to a life of degradation, if they are allowed to live at all.

I must admit they had me fooled. After years of watching peace marches on TV I just assumed that people on the Left were actually marching for peace.
Ten years ago an aging Berkeley radical told me he was never a pacifist. His "pacifism" was quite selective, like Lenin's. He was a Pacifraud, and so are Cindy Sheehan's supporters. Pacifrauds forgot to march in the streets when President Clinton bombed Serbian civilians from 15,000 feet in order to "liberate" Kosovo. We now know that hundreds of ancient churches have been burned down in Kosovo since its "liberation," and replaced by mosques.
Kosovo is now Dharb al Salam, a house of peace. It is a great success story. Just ask Bill Clinton.

Honest pacifists are rare. After all, to be an honest pacifist one must be either a saint, or in deep denial of the world as it is. Take the two most celebrated pacifists of the last century, Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi. No doubt Einstein and Gandhi wanted peace. So do we all. But it was Einstein who told FDR about the atom bomb, and thereby set into motion the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki several years later. And it was Gandhi who mobilized Western opinion to throw the British Raj out of India, at the cost of 4 million lives during the chaotic Partition of 1948. As peace makers, Einstein and Gandhi were stupendous failures. If causing four million deaths is not a failure, what is?

Some years after Hiroshima, Albert Einstein wrote to a Japanese physicist that

"I didn't write that I was an absolute pacifist but that I have always been a convinced pacifist. That means there are circumstances in which in my opinion it is necessary to use force."

"Such a case would be when I face an opponent whose unconditional aim is to destroy me and my people."

The fact is that Einstein was simply confronted with a stark reality. He fled Germany in 1933, after seeing the Nazis come to power. He could not longer deny Hitler's plain intentions. The real world does present painful choices, as it does today. Honestly facing such choices is called "adulthood." The Pacifraud Left is therefore in endless denial of adulthood and reality.

In Samuel Johnson's time political demagogues used the rhetoric of patriotism. Today, pacifism attracts scoundrels because they can use the rhetoric of peace to fool the gullible. But Pacifraud is not just a lesson in the gullibility of human beings. It is much more dangerous. The public pretense that any decent person must be a pacifist makes it impossible for us to tell the truth about the world, and about the real choices we face as a country.

In the last hundred years we have always been faced with deadly enemies to our very existence: Nazism, Marxism, and Islamofascism. We are therefore always confronted with Einstein's choice. Do we tell FDR about the Bomb, or let Hitler win? Do we fight and lose precious American lives in Iraq, or maybe have to battle a stronger Saddam later on?

On this very day we face the question whether the crazies in Iran will get their own Bomb. It is the most urgent questions of our day, but our brain-washed media keep us from even thinking about it.

Adults have to face those questions.

Contrary to the mythagogues of the Left, our dilemma, like Einstein's, is never "War versus Peace." It is always "What kind of war?" "What kind of peace?"

Even if we do our utmost to make perfect decisions, our knowledge is always incomplete. FDR made mistakes, Truman did, Gandhi did, Einstein did. They just realized that doing nothing is also a decision. People can die when we do nothing --- as in the Holocaust, the Gulag, World War II.

Welcome to the real world, Cindy. Leave the Pacifrauds behind, and, if you are an adult with a conscience, make a heartfelt apology to President Bush and your fellow citizens.

Ellie

[EDNA TRIMBLE]

ONE THING IS INEVITABLE AND THAT IS THAT CINDY SHEEHAN HAS TARNISHED HER SON'S HEROISM, HER SON WENT INTO THE MILITARY BECAUSE HE WANTED TO BE THERE AND HE RE-UPPED THAT SHOULD TELL HER SOMETHING, HE WAS A FINE YOUNG MAN WHOWAS THERE FOR WHAT HE BELIEVED IN AND THAT WAS FREEDOM FOR THIS COUNTRY AT ANY COST . WHAT THE TERRIBLE THING IS ABOUT THIS IS THAT SHE DIDN'T BELIEVE IN THE SAME THING. AHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SO PROUD OF THE FINE YOUNG MAN SHE HAD. SHAME ON YOU CINDY SHEEHAN!!!!