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Cindy Sheehan has a right to express her feelings, and Americans have a right to question her motives. Cindy is a walking, talking public forum -- sort of a self-contained travelling medicine show
Posted on 08/15/2005 10:11:41 AM PDT by txgirl4Bush
The mother of a slain US serviceman has upstaged virtually everything else in the news, including the historic pullout of Israeli settlers in Gaza and the looming constitutional deadline in Iraq.
Cindy Sheehan's son Casey was killed five days after arriving in Iraq last year. He was twenty-four. His mother has been camped outside President Bush's Crawford ranch since last Saturday, demanding to speak with the president about her son.
The liberal press has picked up on Mrs. Sheehan's protest, running headlines like "Cindy Sheehan, Democratic Savior?" (DemocracyArsenal.org) and "Cindy Sheehan's Protest is Heroic" (Arizona Republic).
An open letter ostensibly signed by Ralph Nader praised Mrs. Sheehan for her, "courage to spotlight nationally the character of a President who refuses to meet with anyone or any group critical of his illegal, fabricated, deceptive war and occupation of that ravaged country."
(Nader's letter received front-page coverage from that bastion of democratic thought, al-Jazeera.)
al-Jazeera gleefully reported Nader's claim that "This rogue regime, led by two draft-dodgers and officially counseled by similar pro-war evaders during the Vietnam War, is not “our country.”
"Millions of Americans, including military and public servants in his Administration, and many in the retired military, diplomatic and intelligence services, opposed this war, still oppose it and do not equate George W. Bush and Dick Cheney with the United States of America."
Music to the terrorist enemy's ears. America is being led by a 'rogue regime' of draft-dodgers who are running roughshod over the US military, diplomatic and intelligence services, and America's leadership has no support among its senior officials, especially its retired senior officials.
The potential al-Qaeda recruit doesn't know or care if those 'retired senior officials' were actually senior officials during the Clinton administration, or about Republican and Democratic politics. What he knows is that the United States is being led by criminals who are conducting an 'illegal, fabricated and deceptive war and occupation' of Iraq.
That is enough to make any ignorant Islamic purist from Backwater, Pakistan, want to jump up, grab a gun and join the jihad. Makes you wonder why there are so many of them, doesn't it? Well, we can thank people like Cindy Sheehan.
I am not unsympathetic towards the family of any serviceman killed in our defense. The loss of a single American on foreign soil diminishes us all. But Mrs. Sheehan's protest, if successful, renders her son's death meaningless. And not just her son. The sons and daughters of all the rest of America's bereaved parents, if Mrs. Sheehan has her way, also died for no good purpose.
That is Mrs. Sheehan's story, and she is sticking to it, no matter how much pain it may cause other parents, especially those whose children are in harm's way at this very moment. And Mrs. Sheehan's cause is a fraud.
Assessment:
Cindy Sheehan's goal is to have a meeting with President Bush. What is almost impossible to find in the mainstream media coverage is the fact that Mrs. Sheehan has already met with President Bush.
And her new-found angst over the war was nowhere in evidence, if the interview Sheehan gave to her hometown newspaper, the Vacaville Reporter, is any indication.
"'I now know (Bush is) 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,' " and, "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."
Wrote the Vacaville Reporter, "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."
Since then, Sheehan has parsed and reparsed her original interview to explain how she didn't really mean what she said. She isn't claiming that she was misquoted, but rather than she was 'quoted out of context.'
(Here is a link to the relevant news report, so you can judge the context for yourself -- http://www.thereporter.com/republished/ci_2923921)
So in context, Bush is sorry, feels their pain, is a man of faith, AND is a liar and a fraud who, in her present reincarnation as an antiwar protestor, "killed my son," and is now working hard at convincing America that her son's sacrifice was for nothing.
But to listen to the mainstream coverage, Bush is refusing to meet with Mrs. Sheehan because he hasn't the moral courage to face her. Granted, Mrs. Sheehan's loss is deserving of an audience with the president, but she has ALREADY met with the president.
And her current protest is not an effort for a second audience with President Bush, but is instead a transparent and cynical use of her son's death to advance her own political agenda.
The rest of the Sheehan family has already distanced itself from her protest -- which is another element to this story that is mysteriously absent from the mainstream liberal media coverage. The family issued a little-noticed press release, saying;
"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.
Sincerely, Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins."
Perhaps in response to al-Jazeera's publication of Ralph Nader's seditious 'open letter to Cindy Sheehan', an Iraqi blogger published his own open letter to Mrs. Sheehan:
"Ma'am. . . your face doesn't look strange to me at all; I see it everyday on endless numbers of Iraqi women who were struck by losses like yours. Our fellow country men and women were buried alive, cut to pieces and thrown in acid pools and some were fed to the wild dogs while those who were lucky enough ran away to live like strangers and the Iraqi mother was left to grieve one son buried in an unfound grave and another one living far away who she might not get to see again."
The blogger, who signed himself 'Mohammed' also had a few questions for Mrs. Sheehan; You are free to go and leave us alone but what am I going to tell your million sisters in Iraq? Should I ask them to leave Iraq too? Should I leave too? And what about the eight millions who walked through bombs to practice their freedom and vote? Should they leave this land too? . . . We cried out of joy the day your son and his comrades freed us from the hands of the devil and we went to the streets not believing that the nightmare is over. . ."
"For the first time air smelled that beautiful, that was the smell of freedom."
Cindy Sheehan's exploitation of her son's death, (for that is what it is) has grabbed international headlines. It has made her a spokesperson for the far Left. She is playing for sympathy, but her message isn't that of a grieving mother, but of a grieving Democrat mourning the loss of the White House to the GOP.
Sheehan has her own recipe for peace with the terrorists -- one that sounds hauntingly familiar. According to Sheehan, first, America must pull out of Iraq, abandon those Iraqis who supported the US to their fate at the hands of the insurgency. She has told reporters she doesn't believe the war was about weapons of mass destruction or fighting terror or freeing the Iraqi people. It was about oil, she said, and making Bush's friends rich.
Once the US has pulled out of Iraq, Sheehan says, the next step is to turn Israel over to the Palestinians. Get the Israelis out of Israel and the terrorists will leave us alone.
Osama couldn't have said it better himself, and it is hard to calculate the value of having an American Gold Star Mother making his case for him.
Cindy Sheehan may be a heroine to the left wing. She may be the darling of the mainstream media. She may even be sincere, although, since she is parroting Howard Dean's latest talking points handout, I kind of doubt it.
Cindy Sheehan has a right to express her feelings, and Americans have a right to question her motives.
Her family has requested she not make such a spectral of Casey’s death. Her family believes she’s disrespecting what Casey believed and died for. Considering what he gave for his country Cindy Sheehan is making a mockery out of his death.
But sincere or not, she might as well be working for her son's killers. And worse, against her son's comrades in arms who are still in harm's way. With the full support of the American mainstream media.
It is shameful.
didn't know al jezeera had featured this.
by Cindy Sheehan:
"Once the US has pulled out of Iraq, the next step is to turn Israel over to the Palestinians. Get the Israelis out of Israel and the terrorists will leave us alone...."
Invisible, didn't I ping you?
How can these self-righteous, head in the sand, Bush-hating idiots not understand that they themselves are inciting the enemy to attack the troops they claim to support??
Cindy Sheehan has a right to express her feelings, and Americans have a right to question her motives. Cindy is a walking, talking public forum -- sort of a self-contained travelling medicine show
The Sheehan spectacle also seems to have taken attention away from the Able Danger and 9/11 commission issues.
And that in itself says lots about the news media.
She coulda been the advisor who said let Hitler take Poland
and he will leave the rest of us alone...
Actually, it is in every article I've seen on her.
I think it was Sheehan herself who was coy about this.
The woman is a idiot and a witch.
All we've got is Fox.
Why don't we have much, much more???
Unbelievable. This woman is quite a hypocrite. I can imagine her son seeing what she is doing and just shaking his head in disbelief.
IF this is true it is only because of the droves of anti-American agitators that infest the news media.
I was listening to Bill Bennett this morning, a caller said he believes that sheehan actaully hates her son an was really ticked off when joined the Army. So its not so much her animositiy towards Bush, but her son, since he is dead she has no outlet.
He ain't dead, he's hiding from his mother.
Let them keep this stuff up......they're making us madder by the minute.
"Damn all Jews who made this war possible. I love America, but I do not love Roosevelt and all his k#ke boyfriends."
Ms.Sheehan is another media creation.
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