PR Machine Behind Cindy Sheehan?

With the President back at his Crawford ranch, the anti-war protest right outside his ranch is getting a lot more media attention. ABC7 looks at who is financing the operation and who's providing on-the-ground support.

The camp at Crawford is full of Cindy Sheehan supporters, people from all walks of life. But off to the side are a small group of professionals, skilled in politics and public relations who are marketing her message.

Cindy Sheehan kneels before a cross with her son's name on it, touches his picture, wipes her tears. It's an outpouring of emotion that is part of a scheduled news event organized daily for the television radio and print reporters who crowd in to capture a mother's grief.

Cindy Sheehan: "And I'm never going to see him again, I'm never going to hold him again, I'm never going to hear his voice again."

Sheehan's message hasn't changed since she got here but the support staff interested in getting that message out to the world has grown considerably.

Organizers are set up in this house trailer. Their meetings are closed to reporters.

Leading the group is Fenton Communications employee Michele Mulkey, based in San Francisco. Fenton specializes in public relations for liberal non profits.

Their bills are being paid by True Majority, a non-profit set up by Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry's ice cream fame.

Ben Cohen: "People are willing to listen to her and we want to do as much as we can to make her voice heard."

Cohen's liberal group has teamed up with Berkeley-based moveon.org, an anti-Bush group co-founded by Joan Blades.

Earlier this month, MoveOn.org helped organize anti-war vigils in support of Cindy Sheehan. Current Democratic National Party chair Howard Dean's organization, Democracy for America, is also involved. As is the more radical anti-war group Code Pink, organized by San Francisco's Medea Benjamin.

Money donated through these groups and others is helping to pay for Gold Star families whose children have been killed in Iraq to attend anti-Bush protests.

This week, Simi Valley, California Gold Star wife Melanie House flew to Idaho for a protest and then flew to Crawford.

Reporter: "Can you tell us if you're getting help in airfare to come down here?"

There is real reluctance to talk about whose paying. And the PR machine that's promoting Cindy Sheehan. But not everyone here is completely comfortable with it.

Gold Star mother Karen Meredith went to Crawford from Mt. View. Her son Ken Ballard died last year.

Karen Meredith: "Sometimes things don't feel quite right to me. They don't feel wrong but maybe that's how they do it in the marketing business."

At a recent national meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police, it was decided by vote that people, products, or organizations associated with supporting killer Mumia Abu-Jamal will be boycotted.................................. Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death................................................................................................................... The F. O. P. has announced the formal boycotting of the following: 1 Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Products who are donators to a defense fund for the killer. 2. Actor Paul Newman, an outspoken supporter of the killer. 3. Actress Susan Sarandon, another supporter of the killer. 4. Filmmakers Spike Lee, Oliver Stone and John Landis, supporters of the killer. 5. Writers Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates, supporters of the killer. 6. Supermodel Naomi Campbell, supporter of the killer. 7. Musicians Sting, David Byrne and Michael Stipe of REM, supporters of the killer. 8. The Backstreet Boys who are performing "free" benefit concerts for the killers defense fund. One of their "benefits concerts" schedule for Baltimore, MD had to be canceled when Baltimore police officers refused to work the overtime shifts for security at the concert.

Our local newspaper, the Knoxville News Sentinel published a particularly disgusting ode to "Mother Sheehan" on August 16, which you can view here: http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/opinion_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_364_4012628,00.html

I replied with the following letter to the editor, which hasn't been published yet:

Dear Sir or Ms:

Before Don Williams approved publication of his August 19 column, "The future favors peace after missteps in Iraq", where he referred to Cindy Sheehan as the "mother of the hour" whose "plainly broken heart" was "written there in her plain American face," he should have checked out the transcript of her August 16 telephone press conference, available at http://www.kansascity.com/multimedia/kansascity/archive/opinion/Sheehan_transcript.pdf , @ p. 20. There, referring to her son, Casey's, murderer, she said: "The person who killed my son, I have no animosity for that person at all. * * * I have no animosity towards that person." A normal American mother who really loved her son would have intense, legitimate animosity towards his murderer and, more than anything else, want that individual hunted down and brought to justice.

This appalling remark shows Cindy obviously hated everything Casey stood for and worked for, and did everything she could to undermine him and his mission while he was alive. Casey's joining the Army must have been an act that really galled her, let alone how intensely infuriated she must have been by his re-enlisting contrary to her deepest desires. It's likely that, in her view of America, he'd basically married the Devil's daughter and started having children with the Devil's daughter. Hence, it would be very easy for her not to feel much real grief at all, but to be anxious to parade as much false "grief" as possible and use it as a weapon to slime Casey's memory and mission, exactly what she's doing.

Now she fraudulently, loudly, and lugubriously "grieves" about his death every time a TV camera is pointed at her, just like Bill Clinton "grieving" over Ron Brown's death. Even more vile, she's crassly appropriated Casey's heroic death and twisted it to attack everything he honorably stood for. In effect, as a way to express her real hatred for him and get posthumous revenge on him for his patriotism, she's installed a toilet on top of his grave, copiously used it herself, and invited thousands of other members of the "peace movement" to do the same. Utterly contemptible.

Cindy, by being involved in every far left, anti-American cause she could find long before Casey enlisted, did everything she could to undermine him and his mission and encourage the Islamofascists to murder every American they could, just the way Nick Berg's father did.

Surprise!! The Islamofascists took that encouragement by those two individuals and murdered Nick Berg and Casey Sheehan. Short of pulling the trigger herself, "Mother Sheehan" couldn't have done much more to kill Casey. Far worse, if she and the rest of the "peace movement" get us to cut and run, far more Americans, probably thousands more, are likely to get killed by the Islamofascists.

Sincerely yours,

I saw that interview and was disgusted as I restrained myself from throwing something through the screen. My dogs however were cowering as I let loose a plethora of invectives at the tube. (I later apologized to them.)

If anyone doesn't believe that C-SPAN has no agenda, There's a big orange bridge on the left coast I'd like to sell ya' real cheap. The photos they seemed to show the most were of folks carrying signs of the ilk "Protest is patriotism".

The loony left's refusal to accept enlistment in our armed forces as patriotic reveals their true agenda. Their patriotic protests seldom occur when their fellow travelers occupy the Presidential mansion. If a random protest occurs then, the MSM ignores it.

The loony left is bereft of ideas. A new thought has not passed through their grey matter in years, not that they would have the ability to grasp it had they recognized it for what it was.

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