Vigils take on higher profile

Sacramento Bee ^ | 8/29/5 | Margaret Talev

[SmithL]

WASHINGTON - Since the spring, long before an angry mom named Cindy Sheehan set up camp outside President Bush's Texas ranch, anti-war activists have been holding vigils outside Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday nights, when many soldiers and their families venture off campus for steak dinners.

They've called for better health care benefits for soldiers wounded in Iraq, protested an early policy of making some soldiers buy their own meals while in care, and accused the military of purposely flying injured troops in under cover of night to downplay the volume of casualties. And they've waved signs protesting the war and the Bush administration.

Organizers say they weren't getting much media attention - even after a pro-war group began gathering to protest the vigils - and that the coverage they did get was generally positive, including a write-up in the military newspaper Stars & Stripes.

Until last week, that is. That's when an online news service with politically conservative ties released a special report suggesting the vigils were actually protests aimed at wounded soldiers - an accusation that infuriated vigil organizers, many of them family members of troops serving in Iraq and some of them veterans themselves. The Drudge Report previewed the story, and conservative television and radio hosts seized on it.

Now vigil organizers are alleging that Cybercast News Service's story is part of a strategy by Bush's supporters to hurt war protesters' credibility in the wake of Sheehan's public relations success and sinking support for the war.

"It's all part of a smear campaign," Medea Benjamin, a liberal anti-war activist from San Francisco and a co-founder of CodePink, one of the groups organizing the vigils, said in a telephone interview.

[SmithL]

They hate getting caught in their anti-Americanism.

[Restorer]

It is theoretically possible to be pro-wounded soldier and yet anti-American. I suspect that is what many of these guys are.

[hsalaw]

"They've called for better health care benefits for soldiers wounded in Iraq, protested an early policy of making some soldiers buy their own meals while in care, and accused the military of purposely flying injured troops in under cover of night to downplay the volume of casualties. And they've waved signs protesting the war and the Bush administration."

Liberal cr*p from the SacBeeBrain. They're trying to make these anti-American, anti-military leftist scum sound like they're HELPING the troops, when in fact they're TAUNTING the troops. I hate that rag.

[Nathan Zachary]

really? code pink has been cheering every time there is a casualty. There own words "the more the better".

[stuartcr]

None of this is true?

[MEGoody]

. . .anti-war activists have been holding vigils loud, nasty protests outside Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday nights, when many soldiers and their families venture off campus for steak dinners.

There. Fixed it.

[MEGoody]

Liberal cr*p

Exactly. I've not heard any recording or seen any video tape where these nasty little protestors were calling for any improved benefits for the soldiers. I've only heard them spewing anti-Bush, anti-America malarky.

[squarebarb]

I've heard they are displaying coffins.

And Code Pink ---- didn't they send about $600,000 to the terrorists in Fallujah?

[popdonnelly]

It's offensive for the Sacramento Bee to be swallowing and printing propaganda from these people without any investigation. This reads like a reprint of a Code Pink press release. Also, since Medea Benjamin and Code Pink openly support the insurgents in Iraq, the Federal Government should put them out of business, now.

[MEGoody]

I've heard they are displaying coffins.

I heard that too, but haven't seen any on the news reports. Don't want to make them appear too looney, don't cha know.

[massgopguy]

Seems like they have a problem with Steak Dinners too.

[Cobra64]

"Since the spring, long before an angry mom named Cindy Sheehan..."

Somehow I don't think this b!tch was ever a 'mom.' Based on her actions, it seems to me that she was little more than a biological mother. Her son probably joined the military to get away from his mother. And her husband is filing for divorce. Maybe she'll remarry... to the Reverand Al Sharkskin.

[John Lenin]

Is vigil the proper term ?

Vigil

1. 1. A watch kept during normal sleeping hours.
   2. The act or a period of observing; surveillance.
2. The eve of a religious festival observed by staying awake as a devotional exercise.
3. Ritual devotions observed on the eve of a holy day. Often used in the plural.

   ---

   
   
   Vigil sounds nice but that is not what the protesters are doing.

[longtermmemmory]

Not even theoretically.

The supporting this mission IS supporting the soldiers.

This "support the troops" but oppose the USA is what the left came up as a Goebles point to give them shelter in the MSM.

[Restorer]

I'd like to see some confirmation of that. The pictures I've seen of their signs are critical of the war and the government but generally sympathetic to the soldiers.