Cindy Sheehan - An Examination

You may be seeing stories about a woman named Cindy Sheehan who has camped out on a road that leads to the Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, vowing to stay there until President Bush meets with her (although the real reason for this is unclear since she was extremely dissatisfied with her first meeting with President Bush).

Cindy Sheehan is a 48-year-old longtime anti-Bush person from Vacaville, California, who has made a name for herself and become a star in the anti-war movement after her son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004. Casey, who was not a fresh recruit but who had voluntarily re-enlisted, went to Iraq despite his mother's plea to either let her send him to Canada or let her run over him with her car.

Here is her web site. Here is a sample of Cindy Sheehan's rhetoric:

"We have no Constitution. We’re the only country with no checks and balances. We want our country back if we have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog sh-t in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq. It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country. It’s not OK for Syria to be in Lebanon. Hypocrites! But Israel can occupy Palestine? Stop the slaughter!We have no Constitution. We’re the only country with no checks and balances. We want our country back if we have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog sh-t in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq. It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country. It’s not OK for Syria to be in Lebanon. Hypocrites! But Israel can occupy Palestine? Stop the slaughter!"

Okay. What about Casey? Front Page Magazine looked into the record of Casey Sheehan, and there is another article about Cindy Sheehan here. About Casey:

"While one might dismiss some of Sheehan’s hyperbole due to grief over her son’s death, a little research about Casey Sheehan revealed that contrary to being tricked by military recruiters, Casey Sheehan had re-enlisted in the U.S. Army voluntarily when he was 24-years-old, after serving his first hitch successfully. Casey Sheehan was in fact a hero who received a Bronze Star. He was attached as a mechanic to the artillery division of the 1st U.S. Cavalry in Iraq. When a convoy of soldiers from Casey’s unit was attacked in Sadr City by insurgents, Casey volunteered to join a rapid rescue force to get them out. His commanding sergeant told him he did not have to go into combat, because he was a mechanic and not an infantryman. Casey was quoted telling his officer, “I go where my chief goes.” He was tragically killed during the rescue attempt. The source for this story? Cindy Sheehan herself."

Over at the Tin Ear blog, there's this:

Cindy Sheehan is pursuing a vendetta of hate against the President that predates the loss of her son. She hates George Bush, not because she believes that he is responsible for her son’s death, but because he “stole the election” in 2000 and again in 2004. She is a willing participant in the campaign of hate that the Left has pursued against President Bush since his victory in 2000. She is currently an active participant in Representative Conyers’ impeachment campaign against the President. This is a woman I watched recite an account of her son's sacrifice without shedding a tear, not a catch in her voice, or even a hesitation; no sign of grief whatsoever. His aunt who was also present was in tears as her sister read her son's story. Did she love her son? Certainly she did, all mothers love their sons; the difference is that most mothers don’t exploit the death of their sons for political purposes. They may, as in the case of MADD, use their tragedy to motivate them to pursue moral crusades to have laws passed, but these women have no political agenda prior to their loss. They are spurred to action by their loss. If Mizzz Sheehan was truly motivated by the loss of her son to pursue the ones who caused his death, she would be out for the head of Muqtada al Sadr, not President Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld.

Here is part of a letter from Cindy Sheehan to President Bush. You will note she calls him "George." This is because when he met with her family and the family of other soldiers who had been killed, he referred to her as "Mom," and she took offense at the familiarity, so now she always calls him "George."

“... You feel so proud of yourself for betraying the country again, don’t you? You think you are very clever because you pulled the wool over the eyes of some of the people again. You think that you have some mandate from God…that you can “spend your political capital” any way that you want. George you don’t care or even realize that 56,000,000 plus citizens of this country voted against you and your agenda. Still, you are going to continue your ruthless work of being a divider and not a uniter. George, in 2000 when you stole that election and the Democrats gave up, I gave up too. I had the most ironic thought of my life then: "Oh well, how much damage can he do in four years?" Well, now I know how much you have damaged my family, this country, and this world. If you think I am going to allow you another four years to do even more damage, then you truly are mistaken. I will fight for a true vote count and if that fails, your impeachment. Also, the impeachment of your Vice President...”

“...George, I must confess that I and my family worked very HARD to re-defeat you this time, but you refuse to stay defeated. Well, we are watching you very carefully. We are going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people into a disastrous war and for mis-using and abusing your power as Commander-in-Chief.”

Will Malven at The Tin Ear found this very disturbing, and commented:

This is not a woman consumed by grief at the loss of her son, this is a woman consumed by the objective of bringing down President Bush, a long standing objective, predating the death of her son. His death was just a lucky happenstance, to be used, as the left have used all American soldiers’ deaths, as a tool to aid them in their anti-Bush, anti-war, ultimately anti-American agenda.

...I am proud of Casey Sheehan for his service to his nation. He was a man of honor, a hero who deserves better than to be used as a tool for a hateful political agenda. I honor his sacrifice and am saddened by his loss. He knew the higher calling of his nation, a calling that rises above the petty politics of the moment. Too bad his mother doesn’t hear the same call.

What do I think about it? I think this is something that was bound to happen when the son or daughter of a leftwing Bush-hater volunteered to go to war (and I think we can draw some conclusions about whether or not Casey agreed with his mother's agenda from this) and then did not make it back home.

It's hard, though, because we owe so much to soldiers who are fighting the War on Terror, and we owe much to their families, too. So to despise Cindy Sheehan is antithetical to us.

Read this transcript of an interview she gave to a left wing group. You make up your own mind.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to President Bush addressing U.S. service men and women and what his message was.

CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, first of all, I think the best way to honor my son's death would be to bring the troops home, and that's what we in Gold Star Families want our children to be remembered for: peace and not war and hatred. For him to use my son's blood to continue the killing, to me, is despicable. I don't want one more drop of blood spilled in my son's name or in my name. We never should have been there in the first place. It was a mistake. It was a mistake when we invaded. It's a mistake now, and I want my son’s sacrifice and the sacrifices of the other brave Americans to stand for peace and to bring peace to the world and not to spread more hate. You know, he said that my son died to spread freedom and democracy in that region. We're spreading imperialism and death and destruction everywhere we go. And, no, not one more drop of blood in my son's name or the names of any other of our brave young people who have made the ultimate sacrifice for basically nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: Cindy, what were your feelings when your son Casey went to Iraq? Are they the same as now? And what were Casey's feelings about the invasion and occupation?

CINDY SHEEHAN: Right. Our family was against it from the beginning. Casey was against it, but he felt it was his duty to go because he was in the Army. And he felt that he had to go to protect his buddies, to be there for his buddies, to be support, and they are brainwashed into thinking that even if they don't agree with the mission, they're brainwashed into just blindly following it. I begged Casey not to go. I told him I would take him to Canada. I told him I would run over him with a car, anything to get him not to go to that immoral war. And he said, “Mom, I wish I didn't have to, but I have to go.”

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Cindy Sheehan, she lost her son Casey in Iraq. How did Casey die? What was the mission he died on?

CINDY SHEEHAN: We were told that he was going to rescue a group of soldiers that had been ambushed on April 4th in Sadr City, Baghdad. It was when L. Paul Bremer inflamed the Shiite militia into rebellion, first in Fallujah, then it spread to Sadr City, which is a Shiite slum in Baghdad. And so we were told he volunteered to go rescue a group of soldiers that had been ambushed, and on the way there, his convoy was ambushed, and seven soldiers were killed in that ambush.

AMY GOODMAN: Cindy Sheehan, there was no mention last night at the Fort Bragg speech of the Downing Street minutes, the minutes that were taken July 23, 2002, before the invasion, of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisors, saying that the U.S. was fixing the facts and intelligence around the policy to go to war. But you were at the hearing on the Hill in the Capitol, even if it was in the basement, that was held by Congressman Conyers. Of the significance of these minutes, can you talk about that?

CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, like I said, we didn't agree with the war, we didn't agree with the invasion of Iraq. It looked like we were rushing into something that was unnecessary. You know, it was not necessary to protect America. And I could see that the sanctions were working. We had years of devastating sanctions against Iraq. The U.N. weapon inspectors were saying there were no weapons of mass destruction. So I believed all along that this invasion was unnecessary and that there was some other agenda behind it besides keeping America safe.

And when the Downing Street memos came out, and I read them, I just thought, “Well, this confirms my suspicion that this invasion was premeditated and prefabricated for a different agenda.” And it looks like my son's murder and the murder of almost 1,800 other Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis whose only crime is that they were born in Iraq at the wrong time, are dead -- are dead for the agenda of the neo-con war machine.

I really think that somebody in our government needs to be held accountable, and just because George Bush gets up and tells us that things are getting better, they're not getting better, and he needs to present some kind of facts to back up his position, and he needs to answer the Congressmen. I think it’s 128 Congress people have signed John Conyers's letter asking for explanation into this Downing Street memo, and it needs to be investigated. Congress needs to do it's Constitutional duty for once and investigate the memo because we families that have paid the ultimate price, who will be grieving and mourning and in pain for the rest of our lives, we deserve to know the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: Karen Kwiatkowski of the Pentagon, retired Lieutenant Colonel, you have written about how the Pentagon has suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war. What about the Downing Street memo? Does this fit into the picture? Were you surprised by this particular meeting and the documents that have come out that?

LT. COL. KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: No, not surprised. Very much like Cindy said, it confirmed things that I witnessed that I didn't understand at the time. This intention to go to war, this decision, this very early decision, possibly as early as 2001 or before, this we were unaware of. But seeing that the decision had been made, and I think the Downing Street memoranda show that very clearly, the position of the administration long before the American people were ever notified of any kind of threat or rationale for going into Iraq, knowing that that existed explains a whole lot of what I saw and it makes sense, and even things that I haven't written about, things that I just saw and that folks in the Pentagon like me, probably thousands of them, saw and did not at the time understand. This war plan was engaged and operational long before many people, even insiders, understood, and it was engaged for a reason.

And George Bush, in his latest speech -- every time he gives a speech, in fact, I listen to see if he will explain why we are in Iraq. And every time I hear him give a speech, I'm disappointed. He never explains why we're there. He makes up stories, as he did, you know, in last night's speech, very clearly untrue in many, many ways, and he doesn't address why our young men and women are dying. You know, it's particularly insulting to me to hear him talk about those deaths when this country, and this administration has more than any previous administration and more than any other country in the world that has lost soldiers in Iraq, has refused to show proper respect for those dead soldiers and for those losses. He has attended to date no funerals -- George Bush or Dick Cheney. They refuse to acknowledge the real cost of their decisions. This is particularly insulting for him to use their deaths and to somehow, you know, wave this flag, when he himself by his own actions does not care about these deaths.

AMY GOODMAN: Karen Kwiatkowski is a retired Lieutenant Colonel speaking to us from West Virginia, worked in the Pentagon, the office that oversaw the Office of Special Plans. Douglas Feith ran that. Also, in our Washington D.C. studio, Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey, who was a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq last year.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest on the line with us in Washington is Cindy Sheehan. She is the mother of Casey, who died in Iraq last year. We're also going to go to Baghdad to talk with a mother, with an Iraqi blogger, about the situation there. Cindy I did want to ask you right before the Fort Bragg address of President Bush, he met with family members who lost loved ones in Iraq. Have you been able to meet with Bush administration officials?

CINDY SHEEHAN: Actually, I met with the President in June of 2004, a couple of months after my son was killed. We were summoned up to Fort Irwin, Washington state, to have a sit down with the president. So my entire family went. And I was on CNN last night with Larry King talking about this, and there was another mother who had met with him, and she said that she supports the war and the President, and she said he was so warm and everything and gentle and kind, and when my family and I met with him, I met a man who had no compassion in him. He had no heart. Like Karen said, he cares nothing about us. We tried to show him pictures of Casey. He wouldn't look at them. He wouldn't even acknowledge Casey's name. He called me “Mom” through the entire visit. He acted like we were at a tea party, like it was something fun, that we should just be so pleased that we got to meet with the President who killed our son.

Let me step in here a minute. Having watched President Bush for all these years now, do you really think the man would act "like we were at a tea party, like it was something fun" when he meets with the families of fallen soldiers? I think not. I think this is either fiction or one hell of an attitude on the part of Cindy Sheehan - an attitude that had to have pre-dated the war in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you say to him?

CINDY SHEEHAN: The first thing, he came up to me, and he goes, “Mom, I can't imagine your loss. I can't imagine losing a loved one, you know, whether it be a mother, a father, a sister or brother.” And I stopped him, and I said, “You have two children. Try to imagine them being killed in a war. How would that make you feel?” And he got a little bit of -- just a little bit of human flicker in his eye, like he might be connected for a minute, because this is a man that's disconnected from humanity. And he had just got a little flicker in his eye, and I said, “Trust me, you don't want to go there.” And you know what he told me? He goes, “You're right, I don't.” And so I said, “Well, thank you for putting me there.”

And then he moved on to the next person, and then a little while later we were talking, and he went up to my oldest daughter, and he said, “I wish I could bring back your loved one to replace the hole in your heart.” And she goes, “Yeah, so do we.” And he gave her the dirtiest look and turned his back on her and ignored her for the rest of the meeting. And then a little later on in the meeting, I said, “Why were we invited here? We didn't vote for you in 2000, and we're certainly not going to vote for you in 2004.” And he said, “It's not about politics,” which is just bologna, because he went through the campaign trail, and last night he said he meets with families, and we say that we’re praying for him and stuff like that.

You know, that’s not -- that wasn't our experience. And everybody else I’ve talked to who have met with him have about the same experiences I do. He comes in, says I want to extend the gratitude of the nation and express my condolences, but he says it, and his eyes don't convey that, his heart doesn't convey that. We felt – we left our meeting with him feeling worse than when we walked in, feeling more determined to stop the madness in Iraq than before.

I think it's important to bottom line this and point this out: Cindy Sheehan thinks it's not necessary to protect America. There may be some grieving mothers from 9/11 who may have a difference of opinion with her there.

At a memorial site for soldiers, one person had this comment, and I agree with him.

"I wonder if Casey would support your use of his death as an opportunity to forward his mother's own private political beliefs. He accepted the job and the training. He was doing that job when he was sadly taken from us. Millions of Iraqis are free today, and thousands of insurgents don't want that because religious oppression is important to them. Casey fought for those free Iraqis. His mother, it seems to me, is offering support for those insurgents. Mourn your son privately, madam. Don't exploit his death for your own selfish beliefs. You're wrong when you say that President Bush said, or believed, or did anything that President Clinton wouldn't have done. Clinton threatened to do all of those things, because it was right. Honor your son." --Mike Chamberlain of Duluth, GA

Comments

[gcotharn]

Thanks for this excellent information. I had thought we had a mother's painful grief on display. It's instructive to see we have a cold-blooded, pre-existing political agenda on display instead.

Casey Sheehan died in a great cause. 25 years from now, when Iraqis are living far better lives than they were in 2002, Mrs. Sheehan can see the contribution her son made to his fellow human beings in Iraq. After her own death, when all myteries are revealed, Mrs. Sheehan may discover that her son also saved his fellow Americans from horrific terror attacks.

God Bless Casey Sheehan, and his compatriots.