Editor's Note: Follow TO's first hand coverage of Cindy Sheehan's protest: http://www.truthout.org/cindy.shtml
Also see below:
Local Women Join War Protester •
Carol Marin | Americans Join Mom in Waiting for Iraq Answers •
Go to Original
Mother's Protest at Bush's Doorstep Raises the Stakes
By Edwin Chen and Dana Calvo
The Los Angeles Times
Thursday 11 August 2005
Crawford, Texas - For more than a year, a modest bungalow known as "Peace
House," located a few miles from President Bush's ranch, has served as
a headquarters for antiwar activists. It is lonely work, with little more than
a skeleton crew on hand much of the time.
But then Cindy Sheehan hit town.
The 48-year-old mother of Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, who was killed in an ambush
in Baghdad last year, is consumed by the kind of grief that turns into a furious
determination to do something - in her case, to confront the president
and force him to explain why her son died.
Now, in the space of just a few days, what started out as a seemingly quixotic
personal mission has become something of a phenomenon - with media swarming
around Sheehan, leading liberal and antiwar activists parachuting in to try
to make her their long-sought voice, and political experts in both parties working
to assess what role she may have in galvanizing the public's gathering unhappiness
with the increasing American casualties in Iraq.
Antiwar leaders hope that putting the spotlight on Sheehan will motivate Americans
who oppose the war, creating a political force strong enough to compel the Bush
administration to change course.
MoveOn.org and other liberal groups have rushed to provide support, offering
media expertise and attempting to assemble a corps of others who have lost relatives
in Iraq or have family members serving there.
Liberal voices have swung into action on the Internet as well. On Wednesday,
Democratic media consultant Joe Trippi organized a conference call with Sheehan
for bloggers, aiming to garner more publicity. By Wednesday afternoon, "Cindy
Sheehan" was the top-ranked search term on Technorati.com, the search engine
for blog postings.
The White House, meanwhile, has sought to cope with Sheehan's vigil without
abandoning its strategy for dealing with the families of troops who have died.
On a number of occasions, Bush has met with bereaved relatives - including
some who have challenged him sharply on the war - but he has done so privately,
away from news cameras and reporters.
Sheehan, a Vacaville, Calif., resident who opposed the war even before her
son's death, was a member of one such group in June 2004. She came away from
that meeting dissatisfied and angry.
"We wanted [the president] to look at pictures of Casey, we wanted him
to hear stories about Casey, and he wouldn't. He changed the subject every time
we tried," Sheehan said. "He wouldn't say Casey's name, called him:
'your loved one.' "
Sheehan, a co-founder of the antiwar group Gold Star Families for Peace, has
said she would remain in Crawford until she got to see Bush face to face.
Until a cloudburst forced her to move to Peace House early Wednesday morning,
Sheehan had been camping in a tent along a road about two miles from Bush's
Prairie Chapel Ranch. On Saturday, the day she arrived in Crawford, two senior
White House aides - national security advisor Stephen Hadley and deputy
chief of staff Joe Hagin - left the ranch to meet with her on a dusty
road for 45 minutes.
That, she said, was not satisfactory.
By Wednesday night, Sheehan had given so many interviews that she was sucking
on lozenges to soothe an inflamed throat. Her ears were sore from cradling a
telephone. Her media advisor, newly arrived from San Francisco, said Sheehan
had developed a fever.
None of that stopped her. Whether talking to newspaper reporters, People magazine
or radio and television interviewers - some from as far away as Japan
- she was relentlessly on message.
"I don't believe his phony excuses for the war," she said of Bush
in an interview with a CBS reporter for the network's Northern California affiliates.
"I want him to tell me why my son died.
"If he gave the real answer, people in this country would be outraged
- if he told people it was to make his buddies rich, that it was about
oil."
Sheehan is certainly not the first to denounce the president over the war.
From the beginning, activists have been outspoken in criticizing Bush's policy
and his stated reasons for sending U.S. troops into Iraq.
For the moment however, the personal nature of Sheehan's protest - with
its edge of raw emotion - and the concentration of news media staked out
in Crawford, where Bush is spending much of August, have combined to raise her
voice above the crowd.
"Anything that focuses media and public attention on Iraq war casualties
day after day - particularly [something] that is a good visual for television,
like a weeping Gold Star mother - is a really bad thing for President
Bush and his administration," said independent political analyst Charlie
Cook.
"Americans get a little numb by the numbers of war casualties, but when
faces, names and families are added, it has a much greater effect," he
said.
"Cindy Sheehan has tapped into a latent but fervent feeling among some
in this country who would prefer that we not engage our troops in Iraq,"
said Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, president of the Polling Company,
based in Washington.
"She can tap into what has been an astonishingly silent minority since
the end of last year's presidential contest. It will capture attention."
But other analysts predicted that Sheehan would soon fade from the scene.
"The president has an Iraq problem, but I don't think it's much worsened
by Mrs. Sheehan," said professor Stephen Hess of George Washington University.
"One Gold Star mother is a sympathetic figure, but collectively -
as Gold Star Families for Peace - she is a movement and, as such, can
be countered by a countermovement.
"I think the president might have defused the situation if he had invited
her in instantly," Hess said, predicting that GOP strategists would soon
mount a counterattack.
Already, there were signs of just that.
Some have suggested that Sheehan is disloyal to criticize the president in
time of war. Even in Vacaville, Sheehan said, some people say she is shaming
her son's memory. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin disdainfully called the
activists promoting Sheehan "grief pimps."
The antiwar activists who have rushed to Sheehan's side are all too well aware
of the danger that her moment in the spotlight could become just another partisan
shouting match.
Said Tom Matzzie of MoveOn.org: "Cindy reached out to us. We're e-mailing
our members about her story today, running a print ad in Waco [Texas]. Cindy
is a morally pure voice on the war, so we're trying to keep the focus on her
and not jump in and turn it into a political fight."
Since Sheehan arrived in Crawford, Peace House has been transformed into a
beehive.
On the porch, bottles of water - and a huge box of collapsible pink umbrellas
- were waiting Wednesday to be ferried out to "Camp Casey,"
the muddy staging area along Prairie Chapel Road where Sheehan and about 100
of her supporters were gathered.
On a table in the living room were stacks of white T-shirts that read "BUSH
… Talk to Cindy! Moms and Vets Will Stop the War!"
In the tiny kitchen, two women busily chopped carrots and celery as they prepared
to feed a growing cadre of activists. Other volunteers talked on their cellphones,
coordinating with supporters around the country.
There was much speculation about "other moms" and parents of troops
serving in the war coming to join Sheehan, although no one seemed to know for
certain. "A busload is coming from Seattle," one woman called out.
Stephanie Frizzell, 30, said she drove from Dallas with her son, Julian, 4,
"to provide support for Cindy." They met last weekend at a Dallas
convention of veterans for peace.
According to Ann Wright, who identified herself as a former U.S. diplomat who
resigned to protest the war, Sheehan seemed to make a spontaneous decision to
come to Crawford while she was addressing the convention Friday.
Wright said many hands were raised, offering to join her mission.
As Sheehan put it Wednesday: "I just had the right idea in the right place
at the right time."
------
Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein, Joel Havemann and Johanna Neuman
in Washington contributed to this report.
Go to Original
Local Women Join War Protester
By Alex Roth
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Wednesday 10 August 2005
They say they'll await Bush meeting.
The idea of making a spontaneous trip to President Bush's vacation ranch was
born when Julie Decker read a newspaper article a couple of days ago and immediately
called her good friend Tiffany Strause.
The story was about a Northern California woman whose son had been killed in
Iraq and who subsequently decided to camp out in front of Bush's Texas ranch
until she got a face-to-face meeting with him.
Yesterday morning, a day after reading the piece, Strause, who lives in San
Marcos, and Decker, who lives in Carlsbad, were on a plane to Crawford, Texas,
to join the woman in her vigil.
They intend to stay, they said, until Bush - who is on vacation at the
ranch for the next five weeks - agrees to meet Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville
in person.
Neither of the two women knows Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son, Casey, an Army
specialist, was killed in Baghdad in April 2004. Neither has a child, much less
one who has been killed in Iraq. And neither had been active in the anti-war
movement. They hadn't attended any "protests or peace rallies or anything
like that," Strause said. "Both of us are very busy."
But they share with Sheehan the firm belief that the war is a colossal mistake.
And when they heard about Sheehan's story, "it was like the straw that
broke the camel's back," said Strause, 29, who works as a consultant in
the computer industry.
"We just want to do something," she said. "We're so sick of
being on the sidelines. Being busy isn't an excuse anymore."
She called the war "this generation's Vietnam."
After reading the news article, Decker, 40, a health care executive, tracked
down Sheehan with her cell phone number, obtained from the Associated Press
reporter who wrote the piece. Decker asked what she could do to help.
"I need bodies," replied Sheehan, who had been camping for several
days in a sleeping bag not far from the president's compound.
So Decker and Strause booked a flight, packed some clothes and told the men
in their lives - Decker is married and Strause is engaged - they'd
be gone several weeks.
"I support you," Strause's fiance told her. "I'll take care
of the dogs. You just go."
The women landed in Texas yesterday afternoon, rented a car and headed to Crawford,
where they intend to stay in a hotel near where Sheehan is camping out. A half-dozen
other people had already arrived to camp alongside her.
Not surprisingly, there are those who view Sheehan's protest as counterproductive
and an insult to the men and women serving in the military.
"She's not the only one who lost a son or a daughter, but how many other
people do you see camping out in front of the White House?" said Joseph
Bertolino Sr. of El Cajon, whose son Stephen, an Army staff sergeant, was killed
in Iraq in 2003.
Bertolino, 75, a veteran of two wars and a retired meat cutter, said he supports
the Iraqi invasion, adding, "It's hard to lose someone in a war, but (my
son) knew the consequences in making the military his career."
Decker and Strause say they expect to stay the full five weeks that Bush is
on vacation. They both said they expect to suffer financially. Strause and her
fiance recently bought a house and "our credit card bills are chock-full
right now."
"It'll be a crunch," she said. "I'm not a trust-fund baby or
anything like that."
But they took along computers and cell phones so they can get some work done
when they're not standing outside Bush's vacation home.
"We brought enough clothes for a week and we're going to keep going to
the Laundromat," Strause said.
Go to Original
Americans Join Mom in Waiting for Iraq Answers
By Carol Marin
The Chicago Sun-Times
Wednesday 10 August 2005
I keep thinking about that mother who is camped out somewhere near the end
of President Bush's driveway in Crawford, Texas. Her name is Cindy Sheehan,
and her 24-year-old son, Casey, is dead. He was a soldier, killed last year
in the Iraq war.
Sheehan wants a face-to-face meeting with the president to tell him to stop
saying that our continued commitment to this awful war "honors" the
sacrifice of those who gave their lives for their country. Sheehan doesn't believe
we honor anyone by putting new lives on the line. Not more of our own soldiers.
Not those of the so-called "coalition forces." And not innocent Iraqi
men, women and children for that matter either.
So Sheehan is parked in a ditch, living in a tent, some distance from the president's
ranch and refusing to pack up and go back home to California.
I wondered when Bush left Crawford this morning to come here to Illinois if
he left his ranch by car and therefore traveled down his driveway in the vicinity
of Sheehan? Or was he lifted out by helicopter, flying up and out over her head?
Either way, she is down there in Texas today and Bush is here.
The reason the president is taking time away from his summer ranch vacation
to come to Illinois is to sign a big transportation bill outside of Aurora.
It involves a lot of money, $286.5 billion for all sorts of projects. Of that
amount, Illinois will get hundreds of millions of dollars to build bridges,
shore up infrastructure and create some new roads. All in all, those things
make a difference in people's lives and so there will be a load of politicians
standing behind the president, chief among them House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert
and other members of the Illinois congressional delegation.
This bill represents one of those rare moments of bipartisan unity because
all of the state's Democrats and Republicans in Congress voted for it, as did
our two United States senators. There will be a lot of applause and and a sense
of accomplishment, a lot of back-slapping and congratulation. These are the
kind of events that people in public life love. It's a way to focus on the positive.
The Iraq war is not a positive. That's why for two years we haven't been allowed
to view soldiers' flag-draped coffins coming into Dover Air Force base. That's
why the president keeps the cost of this war out of the official annual budget
document, relegating it to supplemental appropriations instead. And that's why
the administration would rather use terms like "coalition forces"
rather than actually name the countries supporting us. After all, just how many
troops do we really think can be supplied by Albania, Azerbaijan and Estonia?
Sadly, for most of us the Iraq war has become terrible noise in the background
of our lives. It doesn't really reach us except when we turn on the television
or open the newspaper or check our e-mail. That's where it pops up much like
an unwelcome Internet ad that we can make disappear with a click. The problem
is that it keeps popping up.
We are only a third of the way through August, and 31 more soldiers are dead.
Car bombs. Insurgent attacks across the country. Carnage in the cities as well
as in the countryside.
Thousands more of our wounded are coming home to rehabilitate their broken
bodies and in some cases, tortured minds.
And as Sun-Times reporter Cheryl Reed has shown us in stunning detail, we talk
a good game in this country about honoring the troops and respecting our veterans,
but we fall disgracefully short of putting our money where our mouth is.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was his usual prickly self when
asked how long we expect to keep our troops in Iraq and how long before we begin
a promised drawdown. He and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, can't say. They have, in truth, never been able to tell us.
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and all the rest of them who took
us to this war by catering to our worst fears and filling us with false information
continue to this day to defend the indefensible.
As the financial cost of this war approaches $200 billion and as we are fast
moving toward our 2,000th casualty, something has to change.
Cindy Sheehan, waiting down at the end of the president's driveway in Texas,
is right about this war.
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Carol Marin's column appears Wednesday and Sunday in the Sun-Times.
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