Mom at Bush ranch decries spectacle (I guess she didn't say all those things she said)

Dallas Morning News ^ | August 16, 2005 | G. ROBERT HILLMAN

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CRAWFORD, Texas – Bothered by what she laments as mounting "distractions," Cindy Sheehan sought Monday to refocus her peace vigil near President Bush's ranch on her central anti-war message.

Since she "came out here and sat down on a lawn chair" 10 days ago, Ms. Sheehan said, the situation has "got out of hand and just turned into a media circus."

For instance, she cited calls for the president's impeachment as "another distraction off of our original cause."

On Sunday, she faced reports that she was not paying her federal income taxes. "They killed my son in an illegal and immoral war," she told a reporter who asked, "and I don't feel like I owe them anything."

And she's been besieged not only by burgeoning numbers of her own supporters, with all sorts of agendas of their own, but also by counterdemonstrators over the weekend – and on Sunday by an angry neighbor who fired a shotgun into the air near her camp.

"The media attention has been fabulous," she said Monday at a news conference to introduce other military families opposing the war in Iraq. "We have finally gotten this war back on the front page and back in the headline news where it belongs."

Still, she said, she had stayed awake all night reviewing recent events and wishes now to get back to the basics of her vigil – and her demand to meet with the president.

"I don't want to be distracted," she said. "Our message is to bring the troops home."

........She and other families met with the president at Fort Lewis, Wash., a few months after her son died. But she has been demanding a second meeting to confront Mr. Bush on the war.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Cindy [Sheeham] and Amy Branham in front of the VFP Impeachment tour Bus

"This is something that can't be ignored," Sheehan said during a conference call with bloggers representing sites like democrats.com, codepink4peace.org, and crooksandliars.com. "They can't ignore us, and they can't put us down. Thank God for the Internet, or we wouldn't know anything, and we would already be a fascist state." "Our government is run by one party, every level," Sheehan continued, "and the mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government." Sheehan also called the 2004 presidential election "the election, quote-unquote, that happened in November." Source

''Who knew that the beginning of the end of the occupation in Iraq was going to start last Saturday in Crawford, Texas?'' said Sheehan, of Vacaville, Calif., who started the protest Aug. 6 in memory of her 24-year-old son Casey, killed in Iraq last year. ``We're here to change the world.'' Source

....TrueMajority, an antiwar group founded by Ben Cohen -- one of the creators of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream -- hired Fenton Communications, a Washington public relations firm that has worked intermittently with Sheehan over the past year to coordinate media coverage.

With this help, Sheehan has courted coverage from the traveling White House press corps with a news conference. A schedule of when relatives of other military casualties in Iraq are expected to join Sheehan in Crawford was distributed to reporters. Her team coordinated an antiwar rally attended by hundreds in Crawford yesterday. Sheehan also launched a television ad campaign yesterday, hoping to achieve what her roadside vigil so far has not: a second chance to directly tell Bush about the devastation she has experienced since her son's death. Source

The Sun also points out that Sheehan is working with the Crawford Peace House, and it says that group's website "includes a photo depicting the entire state of Israel as Palestine." Actually, it depicts a protester holding a sign showing four maps of what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories, noting how Palestinians have been allowed less and less land over the past 60 years.

"Nobody is anti-Israel here," says John Wolf, one of the founders of the Crawford Peace House. "We're just asking for peace with justice and respect for international law." Source

[Luigi Vasellini]

As Glen Beck said "tragedy slut"!!!

[sgtbono2002]

Damn: If its all that bad out there she could always go home. Wait: She cant ,she doesnt have a home any more her husband got smart and left.

[KateatRFM]

If you plan to deny anything, don't do it on television or before more than 300 witnesses. I would have thought even a fool like her would have realized that.

[Past Your Eyes]

What a maroon. What a nin-cow-poop. What a gulli-bull. What an imbessil.

[johnny7]

Funny how the hate for Bush overwhelms whatever emotion there was for Casey.

[Gideon7]

She also lost her job. Excessive absenteeism.

[Tax-chick]

"The media attention has been fabulous," she said Monday ...

And that has been the whole point, hasn't it?

[mhking]

Since she "came out here and sat down on a lawn chair" 10 days ago, Ms. Sheehan said, the situation has "got out of hand and just turned into a media circus."

More lies and obsfucation...

Figures...

[rhombus]

Imagine that... liberals taking advantage of an emotionally disturbed woman. Who'd a thunk it. Cindy is just the latest in the parade of manufactured victims. Lets see there was the senior who had to eat cat food instead of paying for her high-priced perscription drugs, then there was the old lady who had to pick up cans by the side of the road (they gave her a Winnebago) and then there was Granny D. I'm sure I'm missing plenty. Anyone else?

[Road Warrior ‘04]

LUNATIC!

[shadeaud]

How many ''followers'' of Sheehan even know this poor guy's name(or even care)

[yankeedame]

What a maroon. What a nin-cow-poop. What a gulli-bull. What an imbessil....what an eskimo-pie head.

(For some reason that one is always left out.)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I guess Reuters' zoom lens was broken. "Our soldiers are heroes not victims."

Eve Tidwell of Columbus, Georgia, a supporter of U.S. President George W. Bush, stands with her message across the road from the camp of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan near the ranch of U.S. President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas August 15, 2005. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in April 2004 five days after he arrived in Iraq, began her second week of protest with a demand to meet Bush and a call for the U.S. to withdraw its 138,000 troops from Iraq. REUTERS/Jason Reed

[backhoe]

Code Pinko-- the Cindy Sheehan affair ( click the picture )

[The Phantom FReeper]

It's funny how she decries all the media attention, and then says how fabulous it is.

I see the statement on "refocusing" her efforts as a subtle acknowledgement (probably by the handlers who tell her what to say, since I doubt she's got a very good sense of perspective) that she is not resonating with the rest of the country. People know that something is a little "off."

With all the crazy things that she's said, have you once seen a quote in which she talks about her love for her son? I haven't.

[ClidePenbroke]

Bothered by what she laments as mounting "distractions," Cindy Sheehan sought Monday to refocus her peace vigil near President Bush's ranch on her central anti-war message

“I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
- Richard M. Nixon

[RangerM]

I never saw it, but wasn't there some sort of "interview" with a mother/wife of a lost soldier in that M. Moore movie. I never heard, but how did he approach her?

[RangerM]

Just a question....Why is Cindy Sheehan smiling? Isn't she grieving?

[The Phantom FReeper]

They zoom out for the picture of this woman to emphasize that she's the only one out there (as she likely would be on a Monday, as most pro-Bush/pro-troops/pro-American folks have jobs) and make it look like there are not many people who think Cindy's off her rocker. Then they zoom in for photos of the folks at Camp Cindy, to try and make it seem that there are hordes of people there.

Yeah, the MSM is objective. No biases there.