Posted on 09/16/2005 6:09:38 AM PDT by Embraer2004
Casey Sheehan was born May 29, 1979, the first born child of Cindy and Pat Sheehan. It was a long labor. Fifty-one days after Casey was born, our first child, Wade was born, also after a long labor. They started school the same year, played the same games, watched the same television shows, loved the same country. On April 4, 1996, three weeks after going to Washington as a winner in a national contest about what America meant to him, Wade died in an automobile accident. On April 4, 2004, eight years later to the day, Casey, who loved his country enough to wear its uniform, died in Iraq. Cindy and Pat's hearts broke, as had ours.
We teach our children right from wrong. We teach them compassion and honor. We teach them the dignity of each life. And then, sometimes, the lessons we taught are turned on their heads. Cindy Sheehan is asking a very simple thing of her government, and she and her family, and most particularly Casey, have paid a very dear price for the right to ask this.
Cindy wants Casey's death to have meant as much as his life - lived fully - might have meant. I know this, as does every mother who has ever stood where we stand. And the President says he knows enough, doesn't need to hear from Casey's mother, doesn't need to assure her that Casey's is not one small death in a long and seemingly never-ending drip of deaths, that there is a plan here that will bring our sons and daughters home. He doesn't need to hear from her, he says. He claims he understands how some people feel about the deaths in Iraq.
The President is wrong.
Whether you agree or disagree with every part, or any part, of what Cindy wants to say, you know it is better that the President hear different opinions, particularly from those with such a deep and personal interest in the decisions of our government. Today, another voice would be helpful.
Cindy Sheehan can be that voice. She has earned the right to be that voice.
Please join me in supporting Cindy's right to be heard.
I grew up in a military family. My father and my grandfather were career Navy pilots. I saw what it meant to live a life every single day when the possibility of an honorable death is always there, at the dinner table, on the playground, at the base school. Will someone's father not come home tonight? And I didn't just feel the possibility, I saw the real thing, and, believe me, it stays with you, it changes you.
I also saw, then and more recently as I campaigned across this country and spent time with courageous military mothers and wives, how little attention is paid to the needs and the voices of military families. It has to change. The sacrifices that our military men and women make assure us that we have the strongest military in the world, but the sacrifices that their families make are too often ignored. The President's cavalier dismissal of Cindy Sheehan is emblematic of a greater problem. This is a mother who raised her son to love his country enough to serve. This is a mother who lived the impossible life of a mother of a soldier serving in Iraq, unable to sleep when he sleeps, unable to sleep when he is on duty, unable to watch the television, unable to stop watching the television.
And when the worst does happen, when the world comes crashing down and she puts the boy she bore, the boy she taught, the boy she loved in the ground, what does that government say to her? It says we'll do the talking; we don't need to hear from you. If we are decent and compassionate, if we know the lessons we taught our children, or if, selfishly, all we want is the long line of the brave to protect us in the future, we should listen to the mothers now.
Listen to Cindy. Join me so Cindy knows we believe she has earned the right to be heard.
Elizabeth Edwards
That even read like a bunch of weasel screaming...:)
What makes Cindy's voice so special? (Barf Barf)
What about all the OTHER moms who want their voices heard????
Dear Elizabeth Edwards.
Piss off.
Interesting. Both are using their children to further their political agendas.
FAT PIG married to a loser, whose sugar sweet accent and wide smile did not fool anyone;just go away, just go away!!
Elizabteh Edwards is a nasty catty woman. I understand her loss on a personal level but that does not excuse lying about and attacking President Bush. And so much for avoiding the temptation to keep her son's death from being exploited for personal politics. In that regard she's now right down there in the gutter with MZZ Sheehan.
This letter also signals the end of the Edwards' personal pledge never to use their son's death as a political tool.
Their dead children. Ick.
Except for the unborn lives, of course. Those lives are just meaningless garbage, as everyone knows.
This piece by Ms. Edwards is nothing but a big chunk of baloney. She is one of the many lefties in America who wouldn't fight for the USA if the enemy was steaming up the Potomac in gunboats. Ms. Edwards, I am sure, would try to reason with them. What a charming sentiment. Let's try to bargain with folks who hate us, and want to kill us.
WOW. Making a political argument on the backs of dead children. You'd think they would figure out that we know that trick.
Race-baiting jumped the shark when Katrina reminded everyone how we all go out of our way to kill poor black people (NOT!). Child-baiting is jumping now.
Who hasn't heard Cindy ad nauseum?
You'd think that the least this ugly beast could do would be to donate several million dollars that her idiot husband stole from corporations to build a memorial for the kid. Probably to busing chatting with Teresa and eating BON-BONs!
Her voice has already been heard, the President has already met with her, her fifteen minutes are up and now she needs to get a life.
Thank you for the barf alert. It's always good to be prepared.
Cindy et al are mad at that hurricane. It took the wind out of their sails (oops - no pun) and the stories off the pages.
So this is John-John 2's wife?
Sorry, but the way she set this up, I thought we had a Sheehan neighbor-friend here.
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