Redstate

Sue Niederer has been quietly retired to a vegan collective outside Santa Monica.

want her getting "fifteen minutes of fame", which you find "humorous", I suggest you just ignore the story.

Or at least, say why staying in Iraq is important, don't attack the woman disagreeing with you.

I think it is best not to compound the media circus.

under advisement. Thanks for caring, though.

While Casey's grandparents, aunts, uncles, and numerous cousins having issued a statement saying Sheehan "now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the the expense of her son's good name and reputation"

Is this true or are you just making it up? If it is then shame on the rest of her family for abandoning her.

Erik,

I agree with you in many respects.  I guess I still hold out hope the Cindy who is Casey's mom will pull herself out of this leftist cult she has sunk into.  My take here, if you do not mind me linking back to my site.

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/498

This is a terrible thing to watch.  And I think you bring out one excellent post.  The media is destroying itself by not recognizing the other families and views who take pride in their sacrifice.  They feel they have paid the ultimate price for the better good of mankind (and I agree with them, as would Casy it seems).  By dismissing this greater majority view the MSM is further killing itself off.  Without viewers and readers they have no voice.

Is this true or are you just making it up?

You don't know, do you.

The media you listen to tells you all about Antiwar Mom, but for some reason the other 1,799 mothers who have lost children in Iraq just don't merit any coverage at all. How do you suppose that happens? Hint: the same way it happens that you don't know about the family's statement.

I don't know if the whole "Israel out of Palestine" thing is true but, if so, and this woman has gone from grieving mother to shill for the anti-war left, where exactly does the shame lie?

Since Cindy has decided to make her grieving a public spectacle she invited commentary and criticism.  Her son supported the effort in Iraq, felt it important enough to RE-ENLIST, and died for his cause.  Cindy has lost that connection to her son.

I do not find it humorous, I find it tragic (you can visit my site for my post).  But Cindy did this to herself with the help of the cult of the left.  

And why are we staying in Iraq?  Geez, if you haven't discovered the potential up side to a democratic Iraq in the ME by now there is no hope for you.  I think you meant to say why do you think we can achieve are goals in Iraq.  At least that would represent a more informed question - if not pessimistic outlook on human nature.

phase, and Bush makes an easy target to direct the anger at.

I think anti war foks have exploited her story, and the msm of course is happy to cooperate.

I figure she can protest if she likes, but I think the fact that nobody forced her son to sign up, but he also reenlisted indicates that he wanted to be there, and understood the risks he was taking.

I feel for her, she had a major loss, but I just can't empathize much with her current crusade.

Are you just coming to this story?  Casey Sheehan believed in changing the ME through freeing Iraq.  That is what he felt and died for.  That was clear when he died and Cindy first met with Bush.

Cindy abandoned her son's cause and soiled his ultimate sacrifice when she was swept up by the fringe lefties who praised her son's killers as patriots and saw her son as the face of oppression and evil.  He was a neocon Bush supporter - in the parlance of the leftward fringes.  She was swept up in mind-numbing (aka pain killing) jubilation of becoming a media darling fighting a fantasized evil force called Bush.  She is being used.

But in the end she abandoned her son Casey, and the rest of the family stayed true to Casey, his beliefs and his sacrifice. Casey died following his beliefs, which his mother now tramples everyday in the public spotlight.

I wish I could find a news account of what she has said throughout her protest, but I found this:

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200508111811.asp

Chock full of, not just anti-war but, liberal talking points.

I have no idea what this woman is going through and, in the beginning, was very sympathetic to her plight.  I have less and less sympathy each day.

Just reinforces the saying:

Republicans think.  Democrats feel.

Worse, now she daily stomps on the cause Casey believed in and died for.  She cannot come back.  The pain in realizing she has been used and spent a year trampling what Casey sarcificed may be too painful to face, too hard to come back through.

She may be lost, and she may have lost the connection to her son for all time.

I just want to hear the exaggeration presented here, defended. To raise the issue about trusting the media.

You'll get no argument from me about the media. And I'll do you the courtesy of not assuming which media "you listen to".

I'm just saying that if I were this Aunt Cherie, I'd have the guts to put my disagreements aside and support my sister or sister-in-law. Cindy's doing a brave thing whether you agree with her or not and to reach out to the media to discredit her is an act of cowardice. It shows a lack of family values.

That's my opinion about this Aunt Cherie character.

which Sheehan's escapade surely is.  But I have a lot of sympathy for her, and putting aside the media meme of "poor grieving mother" for a minute, I can understand the reasons behind her actions.  Lord knows what I would do if my boys (pre-kindergarten at the moment) were killed in war.  This is just to say that I understand her reasons, but that understanding does not excuse the publicity stunt her grief has become.

With that in mind, I respectfully disagree with some of the characterizations in your post.

the media and the left ignore those parents of the fallen who are offended by Mrs. Sheehan, support the President, or otherwise recognize that Mrs. Sheehan's actions discredit and undermine the work so many fallen soldiers works hard for.

I think this is a case of squeaky wheels.  Sheehan is the one parked outside of crawford, making a buzz.  The left is amplifying that buzz, and the media (always in search of a fresh story in August) are cooperating, but the agenda is the same that drives tabloids, getting a fresh and controversial story.  The solution is simply to overwhelm her little campout with families of fallen soldiers who support the war, make their wheels as squeaky as hers.

Mrs. Sheehan is using the body of a dead solider to get her fifteen minutes of fame

That "body" is her son.  Death and grief can make people do outrageous things, and I know if I ever believed in my heart that my son died for a cause I thought to be unjustified, I'd rail against it.

Mrs. Sheehan is letting that body be used by Michael Moore, Code Pink, the DNC, and the media to extend their fifteen minutes of fame

In modern political culture, these kinds of "ties" are always present.  We can no more blame Mrs. Sheehan for wanting to use the outlets available to her than we can blame Terri Schiavo's parents for using the conservative publicity groups and Republican lawmakers that wanted to champion their cause.

The only one in this orgy of anti-war sentiment who has not spoken is Casey Sheehan ... Whether he believed in the cause or was just doing his job, we will never know.

It is certainly true that we will never know what Casey Sheehan would think about his mother's actions.  But nobody (not even Mrs. Sheehan) can speak for him now, and it has been ugly to hear conservative talking heads imply (or outright say) that they speak for him over the voice of his own mother.

Casey Sheehan, who gave his life that Iraq might be free ... But he did not die in vain.

This is the sentiment that is at the heart of the matter, though.  We know Cindy Sheehan belives that her son did die in vain, fighting a fight that was unnecessary and avoidable but championed by a lying administration.  That is her belief and obviously it is championed by the left.  It would be a critical mistake to ignore sheehan because it gives a face to that belief, one that isn't that of a wild-eyed, rabid liberal.  This isn't Kucinich or Cleland out there, it's a grieving mom.  I understand her, I even respect her, but her message (the oh-so-glib "Bush lied, people died") needs to be exposed as false using the facts, so that America can say to her, "Ma'am, I'm sorry for your loss, but go back home and let our soldiers do their jobs."

I think the media is often mistaken for seeking out "left-wing" stories when in actuality what they are searching for is the story with the most conflict.  You don't often see the patriotic, feel-good, all-is-well-in-the-world stories splashed across the front page.  Not because the media is trying to take down Bush, but because conflict is compelling.  And the story of this mother, her cause aside, has a whole lot of conflict.

A story about how much a soldier's family loves Bush is just not very interesting news.  A good analogy: during the Monica scandal in the 90s, you didn't see many stories about the women who thought Clinton was a great guy (even though I'm sure they're out there).  The much more compelling story was the potential conflict (and juicy details) of a sitting president's extra marital affair.  Darn right wing media!

corporate media has gone out of their way, falling all over themselves, to point out to her that "other parents fell differently than you blah blah blah", "why don't you feel the way they do blah blah blah."

Did you see Charles Gibson disrespect her to her face?

First, the woman wants an answer for "Why George Bush killed my son?" Iraqis killed her son. If she wants to know why her son had to die, it's something we call war. It's unfortuante, but sometimes people die when they're in war. And it's also unfortunate, but when people voluntarily enlist for the military, sometimes they get set to war.

Second, Sheehan had this to say at her good friend Michael Moore's website today:

November 2, 2004 was not his accountability moment: today is.

Apparently, Ms. Sheehan is not a big fan of democracy in Iraq or the United States.

That is all.

I feel sorry that she lost her son, but aside from that, Sheehan is just another leftist kook that drank from the "Downing Street Memo" Kool-Aid, and is now having the fever hallucinations:

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.

(from: "Democracy Now! interview with Cindy Sheehan", 6/29/05, http://sacramentofordemocracy.org/?q=node/view/3078 )

that don't support what she is doing be obligated to support her?

If they believe Casey assumed the risk and believed in it and fought for it, seems to me they are within their rights to say that, just as much as his mother is to make her campout in Crawford statement.

Can you not understand the pain she is going through.

She is a mother who lost her son and she has no idea way. She does not comprehend the reason and causes for this war, and to her, her son was taken from her in vain. Can you see how painful that would be for her?

During the beginning of the war, I saw tons of coverage of the anti-war rallies in SF, NYC, etc.  But I saw no national coverage of the pro-America rallies in Tulsa, Houston, Dallas, and across the midwest.  They had Senators and other leaders, masses of people, lots of flag waving, and local media... but no national media.

I don't think it's conscious.  But there is a desire to be the media from the Vietnam era.  Media wants to shape history as much as report it.  For better or for worse.

I can't speak for you, but when a family member of mine is in a time of need i would put differences aside and support them rather than piggybacking on her attention to spread my message.

Strong families stick together. That's all I'm saying.

Jacob,

Casey's grandparents, along with a slate of aunts, uncles, and counsins released that statement.

I know up side to a democratic Iraq in the ME. I think it is achievable.

According to what I've read, Cindy sheehan also thinks there is value in a democratic Iraq.

My only point was that I don't think making fun of, or discounting Cindy Sheehan is the proper response. I disagree strongly that her deed cheapens the memory of Casey and other fallen soldiers. I don't see the connection to Michael Moore and the groups that are supporting here are irrelevant.

Respond with facts, arguments and support and the Cindy Sheehans of the world will dry up.

Googling "now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the the expense of her son's good name and reputation" turns up nothing.

If the pro-war people had been protesting something, they may have gotten more coverage.  A big group of people vs. who are frothing mad at this (or any) administration is going to be more compelling than an equally big group of people who think everything is going great the way it is.

But you bring up a very good point about the self-importance of journalists.  They would all love to be Woodward or Bernstein and expose an earth shattering scandal-- I just don't think that instinct always leads them leftward.  Again, they seemed pretty eager to report damaging news against Clinton, or Carter way back in the day.  Seems like they've become equal opportunity vultures to me.

Obviously, a citizen's honest grief does not render her policy opinions better than the next person's.  But unless you have evidence that Sheehan is not acting from sincere conviction, I think it is vicious to call her a 'media whore,' or to suggest that she is would intentionally 'use' the death of her own son simply to enjoy 15 minutes of fame.

I say Sheehan is as entitled to her opinion as the next person -- and is entitled to a lot more slack than most, in light of her terrible loss.  

outside the President's home.  This is no longer a "family issue."  She's made it a political statement.  Those kinds of action split families.  It's sad that it came to this.

I think you are exactly right ChiMod. "Equal-Opportunity Vultures" is succinct and precise.

well done.

I have yet to see anyone question whether this poor woman is in emotional anguish over the loss of her son.  That's perfectly understandable and totally normal.

But instead of seeking media attention it might be better for her to seek therapy and stop being used as a pawn by the irrational left.

I understand her desire to meet (again) with the President, but when did anyone ever have a 'right' to meet with whichever POTUS is in office?  And when she has been told what Bush has to say about the rationale for the war, his sorrow for her loss, and his deep respect for the soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom and security in Iraq, she disdainfully repeats the latest tinfoil-laden theories of the loonies.

She doesn't want a dialogue with Bush, she wants to issue a diatribe.

I, for one, support her right to camp out wherever the heck she wants to camp out and say whatever the heck she wants to say.  But I also support the President for choosing not to perpetuate her hysteria and deciding not to meet with her.  Based on the last time she met, we can presume that regardless of what is said she'll have some loony conspiracy theory about it anyway.

I misunderstood you.  My bad for reading too fast.

Here.  It links to Drudge.

I think I missed your point? Dissent is sad? Is that what you are saying?

When she starts talking about fascism and claiming the 2004 election wasn't legitimate, there's no amount of slack that'll cover that.

A grieving moonbat is still a moonbat.

Frankly, I don't see how Ms. Sheehan's effort, or crusade if you will, is substantially different than the responses of the founder of MADD, Candy Lightner or America's Most Wanted host, John Walsh to their personal tragedies.  Casey's death, in her mind, was unncecessary and was the result of bad policy -- agree or disagree.

What other Casey relatives have to say about the situation hardly invalidates Ms. Sheehan's opinion nor are they better positioned to speak for Casey.  

To write a lines like these:

this time a left wing media whore in the form of a grieving mother

or

Mrs. Sheehan is using the body of a dead solider to get her fifteen minutes of fame

As if somehow trading her son's life for fame was a career choice for her?  Give me a break.  The real issue is that she keeps the anti-war message in the media and with evidence of public opinion turning against this endeavor that is a perceived threat.  If she can't be silenced, then let's just impugn her motives, attack her credibility, etc.  

Now, I happen to disagree with Ms. Sheehan on getting out of Iraq (being of the we broke it, we bought it school), but I can make that position without the need to challenge her motivation or her grief.  Are some activist groups using this situation to make political hay -- sure? Are there those on the other side taking an opportunity not to defend their position but to attack, not only the message but the messenger?  I think the diary pretty much speaks for itself.

here's a better link:

Benicia vigil for Sheehan

She signed the memo on behalf of Casey's paternal grandparents, as well as "aunts, uncles and numerous cousins.

Sounds like a crazy sister-in law trying to steal some of the spotlight to me. What a terrible thing for her to have done. If it really were a "family" statement, wouldn't the "family" have signed it, rather than have this lone loon act on her own "on behalf" of the rest of the family?

That's all it takes, is just on crazy in-law, and we can jump to "grandparents, along with a slate of aunts, uncles, and counsins released that statement."

What a world.

My position is right here for the world to see

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/498

She is suffering, and she is being used.  And she has been duped into feeling that her quest in life is to align with those who support her son's killers as patriots, with those who claim her son's views were from the hell neo-con evil, that her son's sacrifice to his cause was a waste...

Of course I feel for her.  Some how someone was able to turn what was pride in her son's spirit and turn her into a political puppet who now daily stomps on what her son believed in and died for.

To the best of my knowledge, the only source to date is the email that drudge published; the original named "Cherie Quarterolo" as the writer, but that was later changed to delete her name. (It was also a mispelling of her name - Quartarolo - which certainly raise questions as to its authenticity)

The email alleges to speak on behalf of other relatives, but none were named nor has any one of them spoken out either in support or opposition to Cindy Sheehan, nor addressed the email in any fashion.  Curious, yes?

I agree that they can be harsh on both sides.  I think the 9-1 D to R ratio in the Washington Press Corps makes them more suspicious of Republicans.  It may not be conscious, but more of them presume Republicans are doing things for underhanded reasons.  They are quicker to jump on Republicans on these issues.  I mean Drudge broke the Lewinsky story.  And Rathergate started online.  It just doesn't seem that the media is as suspicious about Ds.  It took the Swift Boat Vets to get questions about Kerry's version of his Vietnam experience into the MSM even on blatant falsehoods like his Christmas in Cambodia while Bush's service in TANG was questioned without a huge 527 pushing it.

I do think the blogs are helping equal that out by starting stories that the MSM then picks up.  See Air America Scandal that is now brewing.  If that was Rush's station and Abramoff was the funder, it would be front page on the NYT.  But it is Air America so they assume it was an oversight or poor accounting instead of something more nefarious (like funneling homeless shelter money to a political talk radio show).  Blogs kept the story going and it is just now breaking into the sunlight of the MSM.  Ditto Rathergate.

So I agree that they are vultures (preying on all), but I'm not sure they are equal opportunity ones especially not the Washington Press Corps.

Pew research on media bias

how about shame on her for abandoning them?

This is not simply dissent.  The poor women has been brainwashed to the point she rails against everything her son believed in and died for.

She is a victim of a manipulative left wing fringe who would use anyone to further their cause.

That is sad.

I'll buy that -- Sheehan is a grieving moonbat.  But that is differrent from calling her a whore, or an opportunist so cynical that she would intentionally abuse even her dead son.  

and wildly fantasizing up scenarios to avoid facing the fact you were wrong.  So you smear the family because it is impossible you were wrong about something you have no personal knowledge of?  Weird behavior if you ask me.

crazy. Who that might be is certainly up for discussion here.

You need to stop slinging mud at grieving relatives.  You may not like it, but you have no right it impugn their character simply because they do not fit your political desires.

Why not sacrifice some of that over extended ego of yours to Casey's family and just walk away from this line of tripe.

For the statement:

"Casey Sheehan believed in changing the ME through freeing Iraq.  That is what he felt and died for."

The split and polticization of Casey's family is sad.

You need to be specific

but your statement applies to the very existence of this diary itself, not merely the post that seems to have offended you.

All you need to do his read the early Cindy statements about how her son felt Iraq was important, how re-enlisted, his phone calls and letters saying this was important, comments by his comrades....

Easy stuff to find.  I assume you can google.

... understand the pain but her response to it is straight out of the "It's all about me" playbook.

Her son was not some 6 year old snatched up in a random drive-by kidnapping. He was a grown man, a soldier. He made his decision and even if he didn't believe in the war (and there is no indication he didn't) he still took responsibility for his decision and went.

Apparently his mother cannot accept that her son long ago ceased being mom's little boy coming home for milk and cookies after school.

Being generous I think she may be on the edge, if not already in, serious mental difficulty. The kindest thing her family could do is to go to Texas and quietly take her home. Being callous in exchange for media attention she has become a willing tool of the radical left that is more than happy to allow her to be the face of their cowardly movement --- to take the spotlight that they can't afford to have shine on them.

And many have commented that the words are too harsh.  But this character is repeating his smears.  He can stop now.

You know what I disaprove of?

Americans who live their lives with the belief that everything is solved in an hour or two hours at the most.

Our attention span and ability to persevere through hardship would be laughed at by the WWII generation.

She's a walking talking poster for CodePink and MoveOn.  She doesn't have a original thought to share.

She doesn't have any more right than any of the other mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins or aunts and uncles of a fallen soldier to claim her view is the "end all" opinion.

often has to be brought kicking and screaming to a story that puts the Dems in a bad light, although once they cover the story, they will usually cover it, but they aren't as quick to do so.

If it wasn't for blogs the TANG story would still be considered true.

having an original thought isn't a prerequisite for having or voicing an opinion.  If it were so then the blogosphere would be lightly posted.

The fact that Mrs.Sheehan is willingly aligning herself with extremist leftist groups makes her fair game for criticism, imo.  If she were just a grieving mother, then I would have more sympathy, but when she starts ranting about Bush not being fairly elected, she's just another political hack.

he is saying

We didn't break Iraq. If you think Iraq wasn't broken before we got there, you have some serious, factual review to undertake.

that is getting coverage.  The gist of most of the MSM articles I've seen is "poor grieving mother, camping outside Crawford wants to get face time with the president."  Often, you'll read down and see that she supports full and immediate withdrawal, or even that her bus sports "impeach Bush."  But that's it, the crazy moonbat angle is not getting press.

Now, maybe it should.  She believes this sutff, either through personal conviction or left-wing brainwashing.  But a grieving soldier's mother moonbat is still a soldier's mother.

with every combination of words that I can think of, and have yet to find any statement attributed to Casey Sheehan other than one by Cindy Sheehan to the effect that he didn't want to go to Iraq, and refused her offer to support him going to Canada because he did not want to let his buddies down.  I also found two letters that he had written shortly after his arrival in Iraq and just before he was killed, but they are of the "arrived safely, more later" variety.

Do you have better search skills that could authenticate your assertion?

on the status of Iraq before our incursion.  I lived in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and served in military and civilian capacities in the middle east.  I'm not suggesting that Iraq was in good shape but I was alluding to Colin Powell's remark.  We "broke it" simply means that we jumped into the fray and changed the situation and that now we are somewhat responsible for the outcome.

On the invasion issue itself, I agree with Bush I and the younger Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell.  I think this war was a tactical error.  I won't try and argue or convince you of that because I simply don't care to I only mentioned this point to underscore that I wasn't supporting Ms. Sheehan's message or efforts but I'm not about to support demonizing her either.

You need to stop slinging mud at grieving relatives.  You may not like it, but you have no right it impugn their character simply because they do not fit your political desires.

Oh, the irony.

Let's rewrite that:

You need to stop slinging mud at grieving mothers.  You may not like it, but you have no right it impugn their character simply because they do not fit your political desires.

I await the inevitable explanation of butbutbutthisisdifferent

. . .for bad behavior.  One of the most loathsome memes of the left is that grievances excuse most or all sins that they "provoke" on the parts of those who have them--an idea that is readily rebuttable by a re-reading of Medea, among other obvious methods.  Gail Sheehan has voluntarily chosen to be a tool of the most despicable of the antiwar left, and has more than used up any "slack" she has coming for the tragic death of her son--to conclude otherwise is to be disrespectful to the hundreds of other military families who are dealing with their losses with dignity rather than as a means of providing lurid footage for Michael Moore's next enemy propaganda extravaganza.

Go home, Mrs. Sheehan.

...that the relatives are supporting Casey, not his Mom. If relatives of the victims of 9/11 are standing on the bodies of loved ones to further an agenda, the proposition that Sheehan is doing so as well is not beyond reason. If true, this is not bravery - it is sickness.

I could not disagree with you more about Aunt Cherie - maybe having guts came when she DISagreed with Sheehan.

On the other hand, the vitriol directed at Ms. Sheehan from strong war proponents is unseemly and comes across as mean-spirited.

And being against the war isn't an inherently left-wing position.  You'll recall that such leftist rabble rousers like Patrick Buchanan and others considered this a bad idea.  Of course, former Centcom commander and middle east envoy Gen (ret.) Anthony Zinni were pretty direct, eloquent and informed in their opposition.

My point, one's position on the Iraq war isn't a "with us or against us thing" and being against the war doesn't necessarily make you a fellow traveler with Raimondo.  There is room for disagreement.

. . .Michael Moore's site--there's no ambiguity to be found there.  She's been throwing around "GWB lied us into war" pap that could have easily come from the keyboard of the most vile inhabitants of dKos or DU.  Sorry, but she's more than used up any immunity to criticism she might have enjoyed.

Are you insinuating that there have been no revelations between the moment when Casey Sheehan signed up, and now concerning our pretext for war?  Can you really so blithely say that a person who assumes a risk under one rationale must live with that risk if (arguably) it appears later that the rationale was faulty?

As much as one can sympathize with a mother's grief over a fallen soldier son, that sympathy has evaporated when grief turns into a public protest against presdential policy regarding the war in Iraq. I am curious to know if Cindy Sheehan had any overt political opinions on the war previous to her son's death? Or did the liberal activists swarm upon her like flies on fresh doo doo as she tried to express herself...?(I'll refrain from segueing into a tirade about the need of people to have a public forum on their feelings.)

its called an enlistment contract and its called an oath of office. Keeping one's word is a quaint concept on the left. I had no idea until this post just how foreign the concept is.

So your bottom line on this grieving mother is, in the immortal words of Markos Zuniga "I feel nothing - ** 'em" -- she deserves any abuse anyone wants to shower on her.  

She isn't "using" her dead son any more than Michael J. Fox is using his illness to promote research.  Or Yul Brynner using his cancer to tell me not to smoke.  

It is more the sad symptom of the fact that human beings often don't get involved in a cause until they themselves have already suffered for it.  

The John Walsh comparison is perfect.

You don't agree with her?  Fine.  But don't say she is harming her dead son's legacy.  There is nothing that she or any of us could do to her son that could harm him beyond what has already happened.

You're missing the point.  It's fine to attack the message but it's insensitive to attack the messenger in the way that is being done.  Regardless of what any antiwar left movement might do or not do.

And regardless of your belief about things, while the statement "President Bush lied to get us into this war" is merely opinion not fact.  It's anti-thesis is similarly opinion and not fact.  It seems to me that we can argue the issues straight up without resorting to ad hominem attacks -- from either side.

does that oath of honesty go all the way to the top?

For better or worse, Cindy Sheehan believes her son was lied to by the Bush administration.  

If I agree to help you jump-start your new car in exchange for some consideration, then I later find out you were actually using me to help you steal someone else's car, isn't the basis of the bargin null and void?

that she chose to take this course, no one forced it upon her. So if she can dish it out she should not be surprised if she isn't greeted with hosannahs.

A better analogy would be a woman whose son lost a life to a drunk driver, posting favorably on a site that once said that drunk drivers were like the Minutemen, revolutionary heroes.

It IS a desecration of his legacy to side with so many who are, frankly, on the other side.

Don't blame her for this story - she was at Crawford by herself for days before the news picked up the story.  She spoke to administration officials - again days before the news picked up the story.  All Bush needed to do was to spend a few more minutes with a mother in pain and this whole thing would have blown over before becoming a story.

Once it became a story, she started telling her "Get out Now" opinion to anyone who asked - but they asked her!  Should she have lied and said she just wanted to talk about Texas?

I say blame the administration for letting this become the story it has.  Leave the poor woman alone.  She raised her son right - he volunteered to go to war and died for a cause he believed in.  She deserves our sympathy and respect even if she does not share her late sons beliefs.

as we aren't discussing a stolen car we are discussing the oath you take when you either enlist or are commissioned I don't see the connection.

It's more like you promised to do something and most of us had parents who taught us to keep promises.

And what, pray tell, is an "oath of honesty"? If that had been an issue the entire Armed Forces would have gone home in 1993.

read the story. Erick pegs her exactly right.

. . .that if FDR woke up one morning in 1944 to find that the mother of the Sullivan brothers on the lawn of his private home in Hyde Park, screeching about lies and demanding a private audience as Leni Riefenstahl filmed the spectacle and Lord Haw-Haw broadcast the audio live to occupied Europe, that he would have had the strength of character to send a quiet note to Mrs. Sullivan which read, "Madam--I and the nation grieve with you for your loss and thank your sons for their valiant service to this country.  Now, could you please go home and stop disgracing yourself and detracting from the memory of your sons?"  Fortunately, Mrs. Sullivan spared her nation such a spectacle--it's a shame that Mrs. Sheehan has not.

There is a big gap between not greeting her with hosannas, and calling her a whore.  That's a pretty serious insult here in Indiana; how about there?

... when you buy a car and find out that another dealer offered your neighbor a better deal you feel you are not obligated to continue to pay for it?

I don't know why I wasted the time reading through the first 20+ posts about Cindy Sheehan before I got to yours.  Yours is the first post I've read that treats this woman as a human being.  I agree with some of your conclusions and disagree with some others, but most importantly, I thank you for being respectful.

To the rest of the posters: If any of you are contributing from Iraq or other military theaters, I do not include you in this.  For the rest of you, it is so easy for you to hide behind your keyboards.  It takes no effort, no sacrifice at all for you to call someone a whore or a left-wing pawn.  Worse still, you have no accountability.  You'll never have to justify your opinion to Ms. Sheehan or anyone else, because you choose to post nasty comments in secrecy.

To the people who use their anonymity to lob missiles at others who stand behind their beliefs in public: You are sad and pathetic.

This is my first post here, and I notice in large letters at the top of the page, "Profanity is not tolerated."  Is it not profane to call someone a whore?

how about Indiana.

Re-read it. It says this time a left wing media whore in the form of a grieving mother.

Pull another sophomoric stunt like this post and you'll be posting from The Pile™ or whatever they call it in Indiana.

...

All Bush needed to do was to spend a few more minutes with a mother in pain and this whole thing would have blown over before becoming a story.

TO DECIDE WHAT HER SON'S LEGACY IS?

Good Lord.

say? Well don't say it here.

Consider this your first and only caution.

. . .I'd recommend investing heavily in rose-colored glasses--it's obviously a growth enterprise.

. . ."I'm a masochistic fool who would have liked seeing my mother hanging out with a cheerleader for the SOBs who killed me," I'd say that Leon is probably on target here.

... and I intend to abide by the rules.  But I believe there is substantive content in my post.

Namely, it is not for an anonymous blogger to decide that Cindy Sheehan is saying things Casey Sheehan doesn't believe.  It is the height of arrogance and presumption to tell a mother what her son's legacy is.

I was merely combining your "oath of office" and "keeping one's word."

And this whole argument is moot.  Casey Sheehan isn't a deserter.  He served and died.  So the only person who took an oath kept up his end of the bargain the the full extent possible.  

Cindy Sheehan took no oath of office and now she is mad because she thinks that he signed up under false pretenses.  Is that so hard to understand?  Whether or not you believe that the Bush Administration knowingly lied or massaged the facts or whatever, Ms. Sheehan surely does.  

She thinks he got a raw deal.  So do lots of people.  That isn't a crime, it isn't dishonest, and it isn't a breach of an oath.

The only thing the woman is doing is exercising her constitutional rights.  Those of you who feel the need to belittle the actions of this woman are acting unAmerican.

this is what Casey believed?  When did he tell you that?

and I may think she is a shameless opportunist.

Hiding behind our keyboards?

You mean like you?

first post?

btw your scud landed short.

Perhaps you'd like to provide your full life history in the next posting so you're not anonymous anymore either...

This is the Sheehan position in her own words:

"George Bush and his neo-conservatives killed my son," she said tearing up a bit. "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for."

He Cindy and those like you, if the country isn't worth dying for...why are you still here?

I'm sure Leon would tell her that to her face. As a retired infantry officer I know I would.

dressed up in new clothes.

I don't think a person has to serve in the military to have an opinion on war, or whether or not somebody's grief is being used by leftwing groups to further their cause.

But thank you anyway.

It's flat out impossible to even guess what dead people might have believed after they are gone.

Which hopefully means we've heard the very last of Ronnie Reagan, no?

How is it that every soldier killed in Iraq believed in the war?  Pro-war folks frequently reduce these dead men and women into one-dimensional red, white & blue cut-outs who believed in democracy in Iraq in their souls, and only ever wanted to bring freedom to oppressed people.  Soldiers don't decide which war they will fight and simply because they are ordered to the front does not mean they believe in any of the 1000 rationales put forward by their commander in chief.  It means they are following orders that come down the chain of command just as all soldiers must.  I'm sick of seeing every soldier killed in Iraq used as a prop for the pro-war camp.

... the parent of a soldier who died in the European theater accusing FDR of killing her son because he sent him to take down Hitler when it wasn't Germany that perpetrated the attacks on Pearl Harbor.

Imagine that she also takes the fact that FDR was strongly considering joining the war against the Nazis prior to Pearl Harbor as proof of his perfidy.

There's virtually no difference between such a woman and Cindy Sheehan; no matter that both their situations (the loss of a much-loved son) would engender our sympathy, their actions in the aftermath of their losses still would engender our contempt.

It doesn't seem to be the whole family. By here daughter:

Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done.

They call him a hero, you should be glad he's one, but,

Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

They say he must be brave because his boy died for another mans lies.

The only thing he allows himself are long, deep sighs.

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

They say he died so the flag will continue to wave,

But I believe he died because they had oil to save.

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

Have you ever heard the sound of a Nation Rocked to Sleep?

The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep,

But if we the people let them continue, another mother will weep.

Have you ever heard the sound of a Nation Rocked to Sleep?

~ A Nation Rocked To Sleep/For Casey

By Carly Sheehan, Cindy's daughter

Casey spoke when he re-enlisted, he spoke in the way he served and spoke when he gave his life for us for his country. He spoke in the same way millions of others who have served have spoken with their deeds and not their words.

everyone on this blog is guessing at what he believed, then.

I hate to bog down in quibbles.  Allow me to retract the offending post, and substitute in its place "I think calling a person any kind of whore is a serious insult."  Do you really disagree?  

Put it this way.  If I disagree with a commenter here about gun control, and call him "a whore for the NRA," I would expect to be banned for incivility.  But how is that so differrent from calling Sheehan a whore for the media (unless of course there is evidence she is cynically selling out for personal gain -- in short, acting like a whore)?

No actually there was a time that her comments would have gotten her run off of main street and ashamed to show her face ever again.

And frankly, during WWII, those comments would have gotten her into a lot of trouble.

She is product (age 48) of the 60's way of doing things; loud, over-the-top and crude.

She has in her own words said this country isn't worth fighting for.

A true greiving person that is open minded doesn't hold conference calls on strategy.

She contacts the White House quietly and Bush meets with her quietly.

She's been throwing around "GWB lied us into war" pap that could have easily come from the keyboard of the most vile inhabitants of dKos or DU.

You obviously haven't seen the polling data (CNN poll at the bottom):

"Do you think the Bush Administration deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, or not?"

7/22-24/05: Yes, Misled: 51; No, did not: 47%

You overestimate the size of dKos and DU if you think they represent more than half of Americans.

as the song says, a short time to be here and a long , long time to be gone. Welcome to The Pile™.

I assume you have the same level of respect and politeness I've seen in most other members and ex-members of the military.  Do you think it would be better for Leon (and everyone else) to tell it to her face?

I think posts like so many of the ones I've seen here do absolutely nothing to further understanding or come to consensus.  They do nothing but demonize those who disagree with you.

it's not really the "anonymous" part I object to.  It's the idea of telling a mother what her son's legacy is, either online or to her face.

The only thing the woman is doing is exercising her constitutional rights.

Yep ... and so are we ...

This is something the Left seems to have a problem grasping. The Right to Free Speech is not the right to be free of citicism.

Capiche?

It's broken.

Apparently, Ms. Sheehan is not a big fan of democracy in Iraq or the United States

In my mind she is exercizing it, just as this diary is.  It is called free speech.  She has something to say.  She says it.  She isn't breaking any laws.  How is that setting up you as a fan of democracy.  Just let her be.  Erick called her a "whore," you say she dislikes democracy because she is exercizing free speech?  I really don't understand what is going on here.  I don't understand this impulse to attack.

We can all disagree with eachother and be civil, right?

Why don't I ask this:  Why doesn't Bush just meet her for an hour, which is what she is asking for?

Possible outcomes:

1. She continues protesting him, she wants more.

This gives him an easy out.  He was willing to listen to her.  He is the President.  What more can she ask of him?

2. She gets what she wants and goes away.

Wow that was simple...

3. Help me out, I can't think of any others, but I am sure I am missing some.

Now, I have to admit that 1 is much more likely than 2, but if it is handled right her public support would fall away, and she would sound more like she was howling at the moon.  As it is now, she makes a nice martyr, and I think that is part of what the media is playing off of.  Once Bush sees her, that gets defused.

That having been said, he can't set a precident where he meets with everyone that demands that he do so.  But I think he does himself a disservice for not just walking out there with all the cameras rolling (or doing it in private - it could spin out of control) and being calm and collected and personable and just getting it over with.  Makes him look like the better person.

towards Mrs. Sheehan, you should also be respectful to those who come here not to post unjustifiable opinions, but to communicate, argue honest viewpoints and to consider how others see the world.  Thank you.

All the hoopla is over some sketchy thing put online by Drudge?  And you folks rail about trusting the media?  Sounds like you trust what you want to hear.

manufactured outrage makes you look ridiculous.

75,300 entries on Google for "media whore" most of which refer to Chuck Schumer.

I think most people recognize the phrase and they know it isn't what you stated in your original post.

Look, it's been a busy day whacking moonbats and I have no intention of bickering over this. I'm dropping the subject. You've registered your objection it's been duly noted and I'd ask you to do the same.

A personal response. After he already met with her personally.

Please inform me. I feel as if I do not have all the facts when I encounter Liberals.

Thanks,

carefully.

Erick called her a "whore,"

Only if you Dowdify the quote. Consider this to be your long, long overdue warning. Another cutesy stunt like that and you're a goner.

authentic. I believe it is true, if the redstate site says it is true.

This is the sort of snarky bullcrap I'm talking about. The legitimacy of a war is not determined by weighing by the sacrifice involved nor is the sacrifice involved removed by the legitimacy of the war

The president, and everyone for that matter, is accountable everyday, not just November 2.

These guys work for us, not the other way around. This comment and others of yours of late seem to indicate you've forgotten that.

 

ello Moby, not a very clever troll either.

Let me get this straight.  The rule here at Red State is that it is not only permissable, but even encouraged, to call a private citizen expressing her opinion a "media whore," but it is forbidden, and will get you banned, to disagree with the diarist using the (to my ear) much gentler epithet "pathetic."

I was a Rebuplican before some of you were born; I agree with a lot of what I read here.  But you-all have a pretty one-sided idea of what it means to be humane and civil.  

Don't bother "kicking me off" (tm)(c)(whatever).  I am cancelling my account and will not be back.  

is the same honorable legacy of every American whose has sacrificed his life, from Lexington Green to yesterday in Iraq, in the defense of this Nation and the ideals on which it was founded. Those people who are unable or unwilling to understand the necessity of those sacrifices but are willing to enjoy the benefits of those sacrifices, are the parasites of our society. This women and those standing with her not only disparage the sacrifice of her son, but the collective sacrifice of all he has now joined. There is no dishonor among the dead. That sad state is reserved for the living. While her leftwing, antiwar enablers are to be reviled, she deserves neither pity nor thanks for abandoning her responsibility to the honorable legacy of her son and those he has joined as an American Soldier.

But I think that Mark makes a valid point.  I was equally shocked and offended when I read Erick describe her that way.  

You may think it is OK because you are qualifying what type of whore it is, but it amounts to the same thing.  That word was chosen to be offensive.

I was once given a profanity warning because I called myself a wise-acre.  Except I didn't use the work "acre."

to stand by while she shoots her mouth off, eh? Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

CINDY SHEEHAN: George Bush and his neo-conservatives killed my son ... America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for.

The above are Cindy Sheehan's own words, as reported by a sympathetic Press.

Considering that her son not only enlisted ... but then, knowing the risks first-hand and not being an idiot, re-enlisted after/while serving in Iraq, I think she doesn't really speak for her son.

Because, by his actions, he obviously did believe that this country was and is worth dying for.

The only indicia of his thoughts that I have been able to find is a statement by his mother that he did not want to go to Iraq, but refused her offer to support him in moving to Canada, because he felt he would be letting his military friends down.

I understand that logic entirely, having fought in a war that I soon decided was a mistake; yet when handed the opportunity (via two rounds from an AK47) to be assigned to rear duty, I turned it down and went back out, only to be wounded again (grenade) and medevaced out of the country.  Even then, I tried everything I could to go back but the military repeatedly declined on medical grounds.  

Why go fight a war that you don't believe in?  Because of those still there.  That is, many times, the sole motivation.

I have no idea of Casey's motivations, nor does anyone else, despite their assertions that they do.  He wasn't in-country long enough to make his thoughts known, and they will forever remain a mystery.

But what I do know is that I will defend with every ounce of strength that I can muster, his mother's right to say whatever she wants, whenever and wherever she chooses to do so.

Learn it, love it, live it.

To the rest of the posters: If any of you are contributing from Iraq or other military theaters, I do not include you in this.  For the rest of you, it is so easy for you to hide behind your keyboards.  It takes no effort, no sacrifice at all for you to call someone a whore or a left-wing pawn.  Worse still, you have no accountability.  You'll never have to justify your opinion to Ms. Sheehan or anyone else, because you choose to post nasty comments in secrecy.

To the people who use their anonymity to lob missiles at others who stand behind their beliefs in public: You are sad and pathetic.

Is it more clear to you now? Probably not.

PS: The "I was a loyal Conservative Republican  for 50 years but the GOP's rejection of universal health care has made me a Liberal Democrat" thing really doesn't work ...

anything she wants. It doesn't make her right or honorable and it certainly opens her to whatever criticism anyone else wants to make.

Perhaps you'd be interested in trying again, going through my post, and noticing the quote from her that led me to conclude that she doesn't like Democracy?

You see, in a Democracy, in an election year, everyone who is filled with irrational hatred for the President gets to line up on the sidewalks, and have zillions of Media cameras shoved in their faces so that they can scream "Bush lied, kids died!" They can even have prominent media figures help their cause, and a bogus 9/11 commission to hang their hat on. And at the end of the day, on the first Tuesday in November (November 2nd, in this case), their case having been made, folks go to the polls for a referendum on the lying, murdering bastard in question.

That's called his "day of accountability". The moonbats made their case loud and often, and lost.

Now this particular moonbat apparently doesn't think that the day of accountability Bush already had, in which the democratic voice of the people sent him back to office, was good enough. She apparently thinks he should leave because she says so, to hell with what the majority of the people wanted.

It sucks to make your case and lose eletions. I know. But that doesn't mean the country has to start over just because you didn't like the way it turned out.

under advisement. Thanks for caring, though.

I will accept that.  That is your choice.  I already responded to this here.

I am sincerely sorry that you feel I have a long, long overdue warning.  When I have disagreed, I have always tried to be constructive.  If you feel I don't fit in and need to be eliminated, go for it.  And if it is for this, I am fine with that.  I really think that word was over the line no matter what the situation, and no matter how it was qualified.

If only all of us could lose our sons or daughters in order to be presented with such a golden opportunity.  

As I stated further down, people generally don't get involved with causes until it is too late.  To claim that Cindy Sheehan's "use" of a personal tragedy as a spur in her personal crusade is somehow unique or unsavory ignores the fact that nearly all personal crusades are spurred by personal tragedy.

Yul Brynner became an anti smoking activist AFTER he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  John Walsh became an anti crime activist AFTER his son was abducted and murdered by a criminal.  Candy Lightner started MADD AFTER her daughter was killed by a drunk driver.  See a pattern?  

 

the basis of the bargain remains intact.

It is (from Cindy Sheehan's perspective) more akin to finding out that the dealer rolled back the odometer.  

This is contracts 101 here.  

You lost. Get over it.

If the President were doing a bunch of stuff he didn't run on, or if it were somehow a surprise that wer ewer now in Iraq, when he had explicitly promised we'd never be in Iraq, you'd have a case. Or at least a point.

But given that we were in Iraq during the election, that he promised we'd be there until the job was done, that he refused to set a timetable for withdrawal, and still got elected, it's pretty much time to, as they say, MoveOn.

You (and Ms. Sheehan) can feel free to still express disagreement. Just don't expect us to take you seriously.

the need you would be there.

I'll tell you the same I told my last disgruntled customer.

1- your outrage over the fairly common phrase "media whore" is melodramatic and/or manufactured.

2- you've registered your outrage and it has been noted.

3- I've dealt with this enough, I'm limiting complaints to one per customer.

4- move on to something else in the story to complain about.

You can

(a) go talk to her.

(b) write her a letter.

(c) say what you think Bush should say to her.

(d) say how you think the war should be sold in general to those who think it is illegitimate and what we can do about it.

(e) talk about an issue you think is more important.

or I suppose you can choose the option you've chosen

(f) call her a "whore".

I believe that there is a strong possibility that the email is not legitimate, i.e., the fact that the alleged author misspelled her own name, which drudge corrected by deleting the name from his entry.  

If it did indeed come from Casey's aunt, and purports to speak for whole group of unnamed relatives, why have we not heard from them directly?  My guess is that if it is indeed real, Aunt Cherie speaks for herself and no one else.

And finally, none of it matters: Casey's mom, dad, brother, and two sisters have expressed the same sentiments, and they certainly trump the opinions Aunt Cherie and the slew of unnamed cousins.

she was in the anti-war movement before he son's death. And now she's a media event.

See a pattern? It's a symptom of the phrase that you guys have suddenly decided you don't like.

Cindy Sheehan aligns herself with terrorist symapthizers after her son was killed by terrorists?

Something is not exactly right with this analogy, here.

I'm just curious (and granted, this is coming from an anti-Iraq War conservative): what would it take for the pro-war wing of the party to admit they were wrong, instead of going after a grieving mother like she was Jane Fonda?

People can (and will) disagree about why she's out there, whether she should be out there, whatever.  But this stuff - like O'Reilly and Malkin's garbage two nights ago - is only going to backfire on us.  We don't have to attack all the time...do we?

Thanks for taking the time to be clear with me.  I appreciate it.

I am more than satisfied by your response.  I just may have to take exception to the characterization that my next comment will be a complaint!

I voted for Bush. I agree with the statement Bush made on this issue. I win twice! That doesn't mean I think calling the mothers of soldiers "whores" is a good call. It also doesn't mean the President has been given any extra license to be unaccountable in how he handles the situation in the future.

When Clinton was re-elected, would you have urged his conservative opposition to just shut up and get over it?  Wait until the next election cycle and then crank up.  Of course not -- when you're in opposition, you are IN opposition.  It doesn't have some magical expiration date following Nov 2nd.

If you are sincerely against the war, then there is nothing untoward about pushing for publicizing.  That actually is rather democratic.  Of course, one is equally entitled to fire back in defense of the administration's policies.  Seems like it has always worked that way to me.

(f) call her a "whore".

Except no one has except perhaps you. Read the story.

In the meantime, I'll give you the same advice I've given others.

1-- manufactured outrage makes you look ridiculous. Right now you're wearing fruit-of-the-looms over your head and twirling a baton.

2-- I'm limiting complaints on this phrase to one per customer. Find something else to get your undies wadded up over, get a life or something but we're through with this current distortion you all seem to have discovered.

3-- your objection has been noted, now MoveOn.

There is a difference between "whore" and "media whore". The first, in this circumstance, would have been rude and inappropriate. The second, in this instance, is accurate:

Today is kind of a blur to me. From running around from interview to interview, to getting a visit from Viggo Mortensen, today was a whirlwind of activity. I have discovered that the White House press corps is always looking for something to do and someone to cover. We have been happy to oblige them.

I supported the war because Iraq was in violation of International Law as passed by the Security Council and in their treaty after the first Iraq War.  They would not allow inspectors to do all of the checks unimpeded.  If we continue to allow countries to drag their feet when they have a) a history of aggressive military actions, b) the beginnings of WMD arsenals, and c) an international obligation to open up everything in inspectors, we are then inviting countries to do what NK and Iran are doing: dragging their feet while developing weapons.

This article was the first to convince me of the necessity of the war.

That, alas, has been the multilateralist approach. During the 1980s, Saddam sought to develop nuclear weapons (along with biological and chemical ones) despite having sworn not to do so by signing the NPT. He used chemical weapons during his long war against Iran, and then on his own people in Kurdish areas. In 1991, after Saddam had invaded Kuwait and then been defeated in the Gulf war, the United Nations voted in its Resolution 687, which required Iraq to disclose, destroy and abandon all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and associated research, as well as long-range missiles. It laid down a timetable for inspection and removal which was originally envisaged to last one year, during which economic sanctions were imposed as an enforcement mechanism. The sanctions permitted some exports of oil in return for imports of food and medicine.

Yet Iraq did everything it could to thwart and evade such disarmament, stringing the process out for seven years before eventually kicking the UN inspectors out altogether. Although during that time much progress was made in detecting and destroying weapons materials, Iraq was also shown to have lied at every stage--for example, about having ever produced a deadly nerve agent called VX, a denial it then replaced with a claim it had made only 200 litres, until the UN inspectors proved it had made at least 3,900 litres. So even what was discovered and admitted to cannot be considered definitive.

In the four years since the inspectors last visited Baghdad, four things have happened. First, Iraq rejected a much diluted new inspection regime, which offered a suspension of sanctions if it had been accepted. Second, Iraq succeeded in spreading the story that the sanctions have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children--which they have, but the sanctions would have been gone long ago if Saddam had co-operated with the UN. Third, in 2001 Russia blocked a proposal to target the sanctions more specifically at particular imports while allowing more exports of oil. Fourth, while the UN's failed policy continued to be "enforced" by sanctions and by two "no-fly" zones policed by American and British aircraft in northern and southern Iraq, Saddam has been free to resume his weapons programmes, funded by oil and other exports channelled through a thriving black market.

At every stage, the multilateral approach has failed, blocked by Iraq or by permanent members of the UN Security Council, chiefly France and Russia.

And with an amazingly correct prediction for the summer of 2002:

And that is what is likely to happen. There will be a multilateral process along the lines of option two. It will fail. And then America will invade.

It will be right to do so. Without an enforcement mechanism as a last resort, treaties and conventions designed to control the spread of the ghastliest weapons will ultimately collapse. There has to be a military sanction, albeit used extremely reluctantly. The trouble is that with these sorts of weapons, that sanction cannot wait until a nuclear or biological attack has taken place. It has to be applied pre-emptively.

The whole article is worth a read.  Iraq didn't hold up its end of the deal.  That hasn't changed.

Next time I'll make sure I put the word "whore" in quotes.

I don't think Cindy Sheehan agrees with her son's killers.  

I would imagine, like many of us, she views Iraq as a buzzsaw.  You don't have to sympathize with the buzzsaw to not want to put your fingers in it.  You only need to respect it.

Then I read this:  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165451,00.html

Ug.

Here is why Casey Sheehan re-enlisted:

My brave, honest, and sweet son was sent to an unjust war by a cowardly, lying, draft-dodger. Casey didn't have to go to Iraq, he re-enlisted and he told me "Mom, I can't let my buddies go over there without me. This is what we train for, I'll be okay. The sooner I get there the sooner I'll be home." Well my gentle and kind boy came home 2 short weeks after arriving in Iraq in a flag draped coffin.

Casey Sheehan didn't re-enlist to serve Bush or to fulfill neoconservative dreams - he re-enlisted out of a duty to those he served with.  

Republicans here in Florida will invariably tell me that my son "volunteered" to go to this war. They never (with one exception: 10-year-old Tanner in Pensacola) express any kind of sympathy or compassion. They are correct in the fact that my son did enlist and re-enlist in the Army. He loved being a soldier and he loved his buddies. He was a good soldier and he volunteered for the dangerous mission that he was killed on. He was a trusting person who trusted his Commander-in-Chief to use his troops with great care: to only send them in harm's way if there was a clear and present danger to our country. This Commander-in-Chief has misused and abused his position of authority to put our troops in a preemptive war that had no basis in reality. Bush exploited Casey's sense of duty and honor and sent him to a war that is the beginning of middle-eastern domination and huge profiteering from Bush's cronies.

Cindy Sheehan believes that the country Casey chose to serve betrayed him by sending there under false pretenses, and that George W. Bush is not worthy of the sacrifice Casey made.  For Cindy, it's all about the lying and betrayal.

What did Clinton run on in 1996? I can't remember. I'm fairly sure, then, that I didn't hop up and down screaming that he should be impeached when he went ahead and implemented what he ran on.

Unless he ran on a platform of committing perjury, suborning perjury, and obstruction of justice. In which case, my bad.

I don't have a problem with her expressing opposition. I DO have a problem with her saying that election day is not the proper day for politicians to be held accountable.

That's kind of the whole point of Democracy, you see.

I agree with you that election day should be the "day of accountability" for any politician.

I also don't think that those times are the only ones that people can line the streets to say whatever they want.

You can correct me if I am wrong, but I also didn't know that she was was advocating that Bush leave office.  I think there are those around her that surely are, but I thought she was focused mostly on just seeing Bush, and that him avoiding it is just giving fuel to everyone else.

As for the specific comment...

I agree with you.  It is my impression that people on the left feel that Bush was not "held accountable" on Nov. 02, 2004.  I don't know that saying that "today is the day of accountability" is that same thing as saying that she wants him out of office.  But I can see how putting it in the same sentence as the election would make it seem like a reasonable inference.

I read it that she wanted him to have some personal accountability, and that he should take some time to talk to her.  That having been said, I stand by (most of) the rest of my post.

Cindy Sheehan is wrong on the issues, but it'll be a cold, cold day in hell before I flat-out charge her with exploiting and profiteering on her dead son.  Or, to paraphrase Hank Hill:  This post just ain't right.

Because Michael Moore does. And she's now the celebrity du jour on his website. She writes columns directly for it. And he, from the link I provided, thinks they are the minutemen (note to liberals, the minutemen are considered by most people to have been the good guys).

So, if you'll go back and read again, you'll notice that I said that she aligned herself with terrorist sympathizers after her son got killed by terrorists.

Seems about accurate to me.

My main problem with this woman is that she is now using her son's death as means of personal gain (or at least trying to), and lying to do it. Despicable.

While the term 'media whore' is certainly perjorative, it isn't fraught with the connotations you seem to infer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_whore

As has been relatively conclusively demonstrated, I think it is safe to say that Mrs. Sheehan has met both elements of the definition.

she believes that she has issues that meeting with Bush isn't going to resolve.

What do you call this?

Today is kind of a blur to me. From running around from interview to interview, to getting a visit from Viggo Mortensen, today was a whirlwind of activity. I have discovered that the White House press corps is always looking for something to do and someone to cover. We have been happy to oblige them.

that is what Casey's mother is claiming why Casey reenlisted. Now we already know she has been lying about what happened in her meeting with the President last year. Is there any good reason to believe that she is not lying now (or last October when this piece was written)?

From the same:

Yesterday, I was protesting at a rally where Dick Cheney said that "Iraq has been a remarkable success story." It sure has been for Halliburton, Chiron, Exxon, Osama Bin Laden, Moqtada al-Sadr, Ayad Allawi, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel. I guess he doesn't have to elaborate on what kind of successes he was talking about.

...

I came out from California to follow up on a commercial that I did for RealVoices.org and that was run nationally in swing states by MoveOn.org.

...

I have worked with young people and old people who have had enough of the lies and abuse of power and want their democracy back. Whatever happens on November 2nd, there is such a groundswell of grassroots activity here, that if Bush steals another election, Florida won't take it lying down this time. And I have a feeling that we as Americans in the other 49 states won't take another crooked election with the apathy of 2000, either.

I feel sorry for her, but I just can't believe anything she says.

Before some lefty or troll comes along to agree with me, let me make clear that Ms. Sheehan's is not exempt from criticism; only that I disagree with those who claim that her actions are somehow degrading the memory of her son. Her son is not here to say what he would believe today (as opposed to last year or before).  And it's her dead son -- not yours.  

Bill: Nooo! Listen to me! I am not really Bill Cosby. [the boys and Barbrady show shock] My name is VSM471. I am a cyborg engineered by humons from the year 2034.

Barbrady: Well, I knew you weren't Bill Cosby!

How do you know he believed in the war? His mother has said:

"Casey was against it, but he felt it was his duty to go because he was in the Army."

She is fighting for her son and getting publicity for his cause.  I don't think that is the same as "exploiting and profiteering."

For her, she is being selfless.  She is thinking about the "other children"...

I can only imagine what it is like to lose a child.  It would make me feel powerless.  I imagine she is just coping with it in the best way she could, and got caught up in what can only be described as a storm.

We are talking about one dead soldier and his grieving mother here.  To my knowledge, no one from the "pro-war camp" ever mentioned Casey Sheehan, let alone "used him as a prop" after his death.  I don't know what he believed about the Iraq war, but it appears that he was a dedicated soldier who was willing to undertake risky endeavors in the service of his country.  That is the most I have ever seen ascribed to a fallen soldier by a member of the "pro-war camp". If you could provide any instance of "pro-war folks" assigning their opinions to dead soldiers, I assume you would have done so.

By the way... how's that mosaic of Bush looking these days?  With so many more dead soldiers to work with, the anti-war artists must be creating a lush and richly textured image by now.

Was the anti-war cause?

Since I have been repeatedly berating for presuming to speak on behalf of Casey Sheehan, could you explain why you feel at liberty to do so?

that is as juvenile of a response as I have yet seen.

"good guys?"

Isn't that a matter of perspective?  I haven't read up on the British Imperialist view of the minutemen at the time, but somehow, I doubt they were viewed as "good guys."

I think "rebels" or "traitors" was more likely the descriptor used.

Remember, in this war, we aren't the home team.  

There have been no lies or betrayal, however you look at it, unless you've got the tinfoil on a little too tight.

The U.S. government, the UK government, heck even the UN, were all firmly convinced that Saddam had WMD.  Resolution after resolution was passed with all sorts of overwhelming support to tell the S.O.B. to give 'em up and let us in.

He didn't.

Instead of waiting for something bad to happen, instead of hoping that maybe, just maybe, the collective opprobrium of the world would make Hussein agree to come clean, Bush, Blair, Aznar, and others decided that a decade of ineffective sanctions was enough and action was needed.

Hindsight is almost always 20/20, so yes, we know now that he didn't have WMD [or was able to get rid of them (Syria perhaps? but that's my own tinfoil hat talking so I won't continue that line of thought here)].

Can folks reasonably disagree about the intelligence that we had?  Sure, but at the time of the invasion the vast, vast majority of the Congress, and of the UN (I can't believe I'm invoking their tarnished authority), agreed that the information was accurate.

So at the time of the invasion we had a justified reason.  Thus the accusation of the 'Bush Lied' crowd is 100% wrong.  There was no lie.

As for 'betrayal'.   Well.  The first and most important duty of the POTUS is to protect and defend the U.S. from all enemies, foreign and domestic.  If he had reasonable belief that there was a threat (imminent or potential), he has justification to act, especially when duly authorized by Congress.  It would have been a betrayal to not do whatever was necessary to secure the country from imminent and potential threats.  So the "Bush the Betrayer" crowd is again wrong.

That Mrs. Sheehan feels the need to sit and protest is fine, but she's not entitled to her own facts.  She has had an agenda from day one and has twisted and distorted her story to make herself a tragic hero to the loony left.

She deserves our empathy, but not our meek acceptance of her views or unwillingness to challenge her vitriol.

I was trying to postulate that she fighting for him.  His memory, his life, his death.  I was not presuming to know what his position was.  I take her actions to be along the lines of "so my boy did not die in vain."

You would have a much more legitimate case if Bush were doing anything other than the specific platform that he ran on. So, in a rather direct way, Bush has had his "day of accountability" over his Iraq policy, and he already won. As you point out, for her to mention "day of accountability" in the same sentence as the election is a clear implication that election day was an inadequate day of accountability in her opinion.

She's certainly entitled to that opinion, but that's not how it works in a representative democracy. That's my point.

By the by, Bush has already taken time to visit with her personally. It was a visit that she spoke of in a highly complementary manner. Now she is demanding another visit so that she go full moonbat on him. I think that's pretty over the top.

Should have been clearer - (note to liberals, the Minutemen are considered by most Americans to have been heroes).

Either Michael Moore is exempt from that group (in which case, one wonders why he uses "minutemen" as a word of praise), or he thinks the terrorists are heroes.

This is who Cindy Sheehan has aligned herself with.

She's going around, waving "impeach Bush signs", saying things like "we're in Iraq from oil," and "terrorism will end when Israel withdraws from Palestine" (see RedHot). She's not fighting for the memory of her son, she's fighting for the anti-war movement in this country.

If I can't presume that it's a smear on his legacy that she allies herself with Michael Moore, I don't know why she can presume that it's an honor to his legacy to do the same.

Of why that original meeting was inadequate?  Has she explained this change of attitude?

because of one simple principle: support your friend in his time of need, whether his cause be just, or unjust.

I DO have a problem with her saying that election day is not the proper day for politicians to be held accountable

Well, you didn't make that point in your post.  I agree with you -- election day is a day of accountabililty.  Of course, I do like to think our public servants are accountable every day but I'm old-fashioned.

My only point was to suggest that the opposition should simply shut up or get over it because an election was held, was silly.  

about Obi-Wan Kenobi?

All I have is this.

No one knows what Casey Sheehan's cause would be today.  Not me, not Cindy, not Michelle Malkin, not Leon H., not Erick, not Streiff.  We don't know whether he's continue to support the war or have turned against it.  As such, we have no basis for saying whether Ms. Sheehan is honoring or dishonoring his ideas -- much less dishonoring his memory, which belongs to her more than anyone.

way back in my original post. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

Let me ask you a question that may not necessarily be valid for you, since I don't know how much of a Reagan fan you were.

Do you think it's possible to say that Ronnie Reagan dishonored his father's legacy during the last election cycle?

I guess I am just sitting behind my keyboard hoping that she doesn't get swept up by those around her.  I feels to me like she may be losing sight of (my perception of) her cause.  That makes me sad.  I don't blame her because I have to imagine that that situation is overwhelming.  I am just disappointed that there are those that would be willing to take advantage of it.

I guess I also wish that was where all the anger around here was being directed.  It would probably be a better strategy, and more accurate.

I don't think that trading off your famous father's name to support an opposing party is dishonoring Reagan, although it may not be the most honorable thing to do.

*Although I was quite young at the time, I remember having long, drawn-out arguments with my best friend at the time (on the Little League field, no less) as to why Reagan would and should kick Carter's ass.  (Again, I was a peculiar child.)

You're saying that having the support of about 80% of the population isn't the home team? Is it your view that the hometeam is the one setting off car bombs in markets?

...that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and be done with it?  It would have been a shorter way to ignore Leon's point about the relationship between Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.

Despite the fact that you surely never met Reagan personally, you know enough about him to know that there were certain things he probably would not have agreed with - although there is room for disagreement about the specifics of those (embryo destruction being high on that list).

Given that this woman's son was a volunteer, and a re-enlistee, it's resonable to presume that his mother's association with Michael "The terrorists are Minutemen" Moore is probably not the sort of reason that he was in Iraq in the first place.

Ron Reagan went public in defense of issues that he believes strongly.  Frankly so did his father.  That they might not agree on the issue specifics is immaterial.  They both fought in the public political sphere for things that were important to them.  Not to mention the two issues that Ron was most outspoken in regards to were the stem cell research issue (supported by his mother) and the Iraq war.  In neither case, is there any evidence that he was in fact opposing President Reagan.

so you've met her and talked to her?

or have you just been reading about it online?

i dont recall any evidence of her lying... maybe you could enlighten me? and to get it out of the way, changing opinions does not constitute lying.

its so easy to demonize someone who stands up against your chosen cause, isnt it?

even when she's a gold star mom?

3. She continues protesting him, Moore wants more.

Because it's not about what she wants anymore.  He can almost taste those juicy soundbites... aaaah, anticipation!

Personally, I don't see anything that Erick said in this piece that's any worse than anything you could easily find about our men and women in uniform who support the war, or their families, or others on liberal blogs and message boards across the Fruited Plain.  

You touched a nerve, Erick.  Whhhooooo hoooo.  I say, good for you.  This woman has the audacity to stage a publicity stunt because she now has second thoughts about something her son believed in, and is demanding that the POTUS and all the rest of us listen to her inane rantings and ravings despite the fact that many others in her family disagree with her.  Thousands of other bereaved families around the country have accepted the decisions of their loved ones who have have been injured or died in the war.  

My guess is that Jane Fonda is going to invite her on her nationwide bus ride.  That's what it's all about.  Let's see if I'm right.

...Of course, I do like to think our public servants are accountable every day but I'm old-fashioned.

They are, the Constitution provides a remedy in the case of federal office holders, it's called impeachment.

If you honestly believe that the President needs to be held accountable for violating the public trust then your Congressman has the power to drop a bill of impeachment into the hopper over in the House.

...to suggest that the opposition should simply shut up or get over it because an election was held, was silly.

Well, the opposition could start by raising valid arguments and alternatives instead of running around screeching "Bush Lied, No Blood for Oil", etc. Repeating this mantra at the top of your voice does not add to the public discourse.

--------

1. I have a friend who died in Najaf right around the same time that Casey Sheean (sp?) died.  Even though I fully support the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, Paul Bremer was a fool whose bad decisions cost lives.  The biggest single mistake the US has made since 9/11 was maintaing direct political control over Iraq after Saddam's statue fell.  It's no coincidence that the situation has improved since the transfer of power.
   
2. The Fallujah and Najaf/Sadr City uprisings were committed by different groups with vastly different agendas.  That she lumps them together suggests Ms. Sheean does not have her facts straight.
   
3. Get off this Downing Street Memo nonsense.  Colin Powell and Paul Wolowitz both said after the invasion that the Administration had LOTS of reasons for wanting to remove Saddam.  WMD and links to Terrorism were the easiest for the public to grasp.
   
4. Why did we invade Iraq?  All of the above.

But it is Air America so they assume it was an oversight or poor accounting instead of something more nefarious

How do you know they assume that?

discussion here.  I only had one point -- oppositions oppose.  Whether it's an election year or not.  Telling them to shut up because they lost the last election is silly imo.

On the accountability issue, I write my Senators and Congress folk often on many issues -- mostly spending and pork related.  

With respect to the war, do I think the President should be impeached.  Nope, not based upon what I've seen.  On the other hand, with a single party in power you are unlikely to ever have an unconstrained investigation.  Would Clinton have been impeached by a Democratic House, probably not.

Let me be clear -- I AM NOT AGREEING with Sheehan particularly, just agreeing with her right to dissent and publicly if she so chooses.

public but I don't care how many reasons existed for the war, I do care that one was cherry-picked from the list and promoted because it was an easy sale.  That's indefensible.  I could have been sold on the real rationale assuming that you gave me a convincing plan for "what next."  That was the issue in 1991 and that remains the issue through this adventure as events are demonstrating.

Thanks for your retractions of what I (at least) thought was the most egregious and unnecessary ad hominem against Sheehan ("media whore"). I wish you'd offer an update, however, or a new post instead of just a series of Red Hot comments that no one can reply to. You offer an ultimatum in your Red Hot post, but no way for anyone to take you up on it.

PS: Since I have actively and vocally fought against the Bush=Hitler, GOP=Nazis, and Rice/Powell=Uncle Tom nonsense from the beginning -- ask anyone at Daily Kos -- those sorts of retractions requested in your aforementioned Red Hot posts aren't necessary from me, I don't think

There have been no lies or betrayal, however you look at it, unless you've got the tinfoil on a little too tight.

The majority of Americans have their tinfoil on too tight, then.  Cindy Sheehan is among that majority, although she is entitled to her opinion regardless.

I could go into how all the "evidence" of mobile weapons labs, nuclear work, aluminum tubes, etc. was found to be bogus before the invasion began, and how the U.N. went where we told them to and found nothing.  It's all been hashed out many times before.  Somehow, the lack of any evidence of WMD on the ground was contorted into "well, they must be hiding them somewhere!" instead of the obvious "it looks like they don't have any".  Ms. Sheehan feels she has been lied to and betrayed by George W. Bush.  Considering the divergence between what Bush and his administration said about Iraq and what turned out to be true, I think she deserves alot of latitude in believing she was lied to.

I won't presume to answer for Erick, but I'll stand by "media whore", which is a whole different animal from "whore", which is what the left blogosphere is accusing Erick of saying. I think it's a perfectly debatable point that Ms. Sheehan is doing what she is doing for the express purpose of media attention, and I don't think it's a "slime" or "smear" to say so. You'll note that we've called John McCain the same thing a number of times on this site.

P. S. You make both of the sites in question better.

All you need to do is go and read her earliest statements about what he thought.

I never said all, I said Casey.

Try googling before you make wild assumptions.

This article is disgraceful.  This poor woman gave the life of her son and now you are throwing epithets at her like "whore"?  Regardless of whether you agree with her position (and I believe she knows her son better than anyone, so if she says he was against the war, well, he was against the war), it is not acceptable to attack her in such a way.  Cindy sacrificed her son fighting for YOU and it is a shame to decent Republicans everywhere who fly the "Support the Troops" ribbon and actually MEAN IT.

Actually, the evidence scattered throughout the many comments here and on another post indicate her son, if anything, did not support the war, but re-enlisted and went back to support the friends he served with.  Those in her family who disagree with her are her in-laws.  Casey's father and all his siblings are with Cindy.

Of course, if we're going to reduce this all to a legal question, generally there's a requirement that, in order for a court to grant relief, there be more evidence of fraud than a plaintiff's own, unhinged, pleadings.

Cindy Sheehan may sincerely believe the lunatic crap she's spouting. She is not, however, entitled to be taken seriously.

At the risk of outing myself as a daily NPR listener (yes supported by our tax dollars, the generous donation of Joan Croc, and "listeners like you"), you may want to look into stories NPR has done over the past two years highlighting soldiers (some fallen, some not) and their families.  

After a little clicking around, you will find a number of stories throughout the last two years documenting the families of those serving in Iraq.  

At the first look, I found the  story of Mark Kaufman and his proud family.  See Morning Edition.  From what I remember when I heard the story, the family was not portrayed as being anti-war, anti-bush, or overtly political.  Rather, the story was about the family, the son, and the pride the family felt in the fallen son's actions.

Maybe NPR is not considered the MSM, but from reading this site, I know that it is much maligned by those to the right of center.  Nevertheless, over the past two years, I have heard a number of stories on NPR highlighting soldiers and their families.  

she is perfectly free in this country to have an opinion, to have an opinion about the death of her son, and of course, she has the right to free speech.

for you to call her a whore of any kind is really really ugly.

I'm forced to assume you cannot handle public opposition with any aplomb, if you are forced to such rhetoric.

Am I really to expect you are this disgusted?  Disgusted that there is, among the mother's of the fallen, a war protester?  Is it our duty as American's to never object to war... or only if you have had a loss to that war are you to lose these rights and be called "whore" by a blogger?

Frankly you could have made your point less questionable.

There's a valid anti-Sheeham argument, and since this is America people are allowed to make it. No sacred cows. But there seemed to be a sacrifice of substance to ad hominem style in Erick's post that he now recognizes (I think) that caused most of this fuss.

Trevino's post said it better and without the fluff of slurs, which I think "media whore" inevitably is. The parsing of "media whore" versus plain old "whore" is not something I think Red State wants to get into which is why I think Erick's Red Hot posts were well advised.

Also contributing to the fuss, I think, is the seemingly organized right wing effort against Sheehan. Whether Erick was attempting to indirectly bolster that campaign or merely saying what he would've thought in a vacuum, the blogosphere context of what he wrote magnified the reaction against his post. With Malkin, Drudge, etc. posting voluminously against Sheehan, Erick's strident and inflammatory post was going to be seen as part of that effort and was going to reap all the replies that had been gestating since the Malkin/Drudge (who don't have comments) stories broke, but had gone unwritten.

People have a right to their opinions.  So what if Cindy Sheehan does not support the president nor his administration.  So what if she talked about fascism.  I know if I lost my son in Iraq I too might be inclined to say some terrible things about the people I believed to be responsible for my son's death.  But it is reprehensible for someone who has NOT experienced a loss of their loved one in war to call Cindy such things as a media whore and saying she is exploiting her son's dead body.  Until you too have lost a close family member in this war you simply have no frame of reference to attack Cindy.  This isn't just another left-wing smear attack.  This poor woman has lost her SON for a cause she did not believe in (and maybe he didn't believe in either).  Is this how we support our troops?  By smearing and attacking the parents of troops who die in battle fighting for us?

the only thing you have to go on is HER (Cindy) words, not HIS (Casey). She has lied about what was said in her meeting with the President last year, what is to say that she isn't lying now (or in the Oct article you referenced above)?

they might have believe in one of the rationales that fell through.

for showing us that you can't read

As much as we may disagree with them, I find it perfectly reasonable that amongst the 1800 dead there were many Democrats who loved America as much as anyone else.  And I'm sure amongst the 1800 dead there were many who disagreed with us and didn't think the war was justified.  But you know what, they're soldiers; they don't get a choice to go to war.  We should be even more proud of our anti-war troops as they showed extreme loyalty to this country by following orders that they did not agree with.

This story wouldn't be important if we didn't respond to it.  So an anti-war soldier goes into war and dies.  It was bound to happen out of 1800 deaths.  And his mother is understandably upset.  But to turn around and smear this grieving mother is unforgivable.

Please respond constructively like any good conservative.  I obviously am literate as I am typing out this message right now.  Your failure to address any of the points in my post and simply sling an ad hominem at me points to the weakness of your position, not mine.

outrage noted.

We also have the right of free speech and nothing said here today approaches her claim the the president killed her son.

So take it on down the street. The Pile™ is engorged with people who thought manufactured outrage could pass as trenchant observation. You've been around for a while, don't become one of them.

His retraction is telling.  How much else of what he's saying will he not stand up to if he (understandably) comes under attack for it?

On the flip side, it can be said that the president has killed anyone in the military who died under his orders as Commander in Chief.  Had he not sent the order to take out the dictator of Iraq, Casey would not have died.

While I do think her claim that W killed her son is only part of the actual story (that he also gave his life so that others may be free, all that good stuff), I don't think it's necessarily false.

media whore doesn't mean the same thing as whore, but you would have known that if you had read the comment threads. read then respond

Who are you to say that Casey supported the war OVER HIS OWN MOTHER?!  That is a ridiculous thing to say.  She knew her son best out of anyone.  She obviously loved her son very much and I find it highly unlikely she would betray him by claiming he was anti-war if he actually was pro-war.  Anti-war or pro-war, it doesn't matter, Casey was a soldier who died for our country and we should be Supporting the Troops, not attacking their grieving families.

opinion. She doesn't have the right to take a public stance and expect a free pass. This is a democracy.

If she's grieving ordinary folks use a medical professional or a clergyman, not news interviews and  photo ops.

You are simply regurgitating the version du jour of the chickenhawk meme in a shallow attempt to silence people who disagree with this person. The next attempt at this will be your last time you try it here.

Ohh, so "media whore" is supposed to be more acceptable than "whore"?  Media whore implies she sold out her son simply to draw attention for a cause.  That is simply not true.  Although we do not agree with her, she is genuine in her actions.  And let's not mince words; either way, you're still calling her a whore.  The author of that outrageous statement retracted his own words; why are you still defending him?

but I hardly think my response qualifies as long winded.  

Also, I didn't want to ignore his point.  I wanted to challenge it.

concerning Casey Sheehan's motivations for going to war, which you made above and in a comment further down in the comments.

Her son is not here to say what he would believe today (as opposed to last year or before).  And it's her dead son -- not yours.

You are absolutely correct.  It is ridiculous to think that people who never even knew of Casey's existence until months after his death would know more about his views than the mother who raised him his whole life.

 death then.

No one has said she has no right to speak. You shot the head clean off that straw man.

What is been said is that her behavior is disgraceful, an embarassment to herself if not also to the memory of the man in whose name she's making a spectacle (profanity rules bar me from use of stronger language) of herself.

but not accurate.

There are lots of people involved in this struggle who don't set off bombs in markets.  Casey Sheehan wasn't in a market.  

Last I checked the duly elected Iraqi government has asked us to leave.  There are lots of different people who oppose our presence in lots of different ways.  

Claiming that anyone who wants the U.S. out of Iraq is supporting terrorists is like saying anyone who is pro life is supporting terrorists.  You can say it, but that doesn't make it so.  

His deeds (reenlisting) lend me to believe that he wasn't moonbat anti-war. We probably don't know for sure, but taking his mother's (dubious) word for it is not the best thing, YMMV.

Well besides this line that, as coarsely as possible, speaks of Casey Sheehan's body and disassociates him from his mother ("a dead soldier" not "her dead son"):

The remarkably humorous bit of all of this is that while Mrs. Sheehan is using the body of a dead solider to get her fifteen minutes of fame, Mrs. Sheehan is letting that body be used by Michael Moore, Code Pink, the DNC, and the media to extend their fifteen minutes of fame.

I don't much care about the rest of it.

Because only a judge need be limited to the civil rules of procedure.  In fact not even all judges are.  Administrative judges get greatly relaxed rules of evidence and such.  

Some would argue that there is plenty of evidence that the administration lied and cajoled us into war.  

truth doesn't make the truth go away. Though I'll give you credit for trying it.

If you don't consider our Army to be the home team you really should be posting with the other jihadis over at al-Jazzera.net.

Bye

I can think of dozens of reasons why someone who is anti-war would re-enlist.  Maybe he feels a sense of duty to his country above his own objections to the cause.  Maybe he made good friends in the Army and would not be able to live with himself if his friends died while he was not around to fight with them.  Maybe he has no college education and the military is the best-paying job he can get?

And if being anti-war automatically makes you a moonbat, then over 50% of all Americans are moonbats (check the latest polls).

My point is that it is ridiculous for you or I to try to say what Casey would have wanted.  But his MOTHER would know, and a mother would not disrespect her dead, beloved son by betraying his views.

That was wiped out quickly....Good Show

a "publicity hound", many of those who complained about "media whore" would be just as incensed, with some of those complainants muttering darkly about sexist canine references to women.

reading comprehension seems to be another skill you lack. Where did I say that it wasn't an epithet? Tell me do "whore" and "media whore" mean 2 different things or not?

Also, I have not made my views known on whether I think that it was appropriate for Erick to use the term, while it is applicable, but I don't think he should have used it. I guess you just assumed that I agreed with it since I know how to make the distinction. Erick shouldn't have used the term, it is derogatory, but yet it does NOT mean what you are claiming it to mean. The sky is blue no matter how many times you say  it's pink with purple polka dots.

I never said they meant the same thing, but I don't think "media whore" when a dead son is involved is any better than just a regular whore.  A regular whore is just selling her body; a "media whore" with a dead son is selling her soul.

"Cindy Shehan won't you please sit down and shut up?"

http://sicsempertyrannus.redstate.org/story/2005/8/11/14317/1446

On the diary list right now...

we disagree on is whether his mother would know. OR more accurately would she accurately reflect his views given that she has been caught in a lie about her previous meeting with the President?

you are against his free speech rights.

now you are throwing epithets at her like "whore"?

why doesn't the mother default to the feelings of the crazy sister-in-law regarding her own late son?

vice versa?

Simply answering a question for Centerfire.  But it would seem that while he appears to understand the First Amendment when it comes to his rights, he's a bit shaky when it comes to hers.

He's simply exercising the exact same right she is exercising. But that has always been the problem on the left "free speech for me, but not for thee".

has two totally different accounts of her meeting with Bush.

Either she lied the first time or, more likely, changed her story to grab attention.

Hardly surprising-- things like this rarely surprise me-- but sad nonetheless.

I am suprised to find that "whore" meets community standards... but that is of course your call.

My outrage is registered, I feel no need to make it any more clear.

But I do think you could make your points better without that particular part of your outrage.  But to each his own, streiff.

I acknowledge your right to free speech as well, of course.

you are smart enough to know what you're doing, so knock it off.

Every story about John McCain or Chuck Schumer is guaranteed to include that phrase and yet today is the first time there has been even a whisper of concern.

And we all know the reason why. You guys on the left have manufactured a heroine who you believe should be able to carry the water for the anti-war movement and who shouldn't be criticized. That is the sum total of the outrage expressed here.

Your incessant and borderline harrasing use of these inaccurate talking points is offensive and incredibly tiring.

I take great offense to your reckless and casual association of democrats and terrorists.

And if you are saying that Cindy Sheehan has no right to feel remorse and demand answers to her questions over the death of her son then I'm done conversing with you because our worldviews share zero common ground.

She also has her own Wiki.

There is says that

Sheehan's supporters point out that the Vacaville Reporter article also quoted Sheehan as saying:"We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled," and :"The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached."

So maybe it didn't change that much.  I can't tell anymore.

Hound sounds much better to my ears

Not that you appear bright enough to appreciate the distinction, but there is a rather substantial difference between asking somebody to shut up and stop embarassing themself, and saying they have no right to speak in the first place.

play nice.

When did the duly constituted authority of Iraq ask us to leave?  Their leaders have refuted any such talk, both while visiting our country, and while at home in Iraq.

that alls im saying. her family should have the decency to deal with her privately, shame on them for bringing their disagreements to the public. To, as you say, go to Texas and take her home quietly.

On another note, can no one here use the word left without putting some denegrating adjective in front of it. Or is this a known fact? that the left is not just the left but rather the "loony left", "crazy left", "irrational left", "radical left", "moonbat left" etc.

And you are right.  I can just see Moore salivating for his next premier.

So at this point, is it to keep Moore from getting fodder?  I can tell you he is going to make that movie one way or another.  Geezy.  It will just be like Roger and Me, except it will be Cindy chasing down Bush.  I wonder if Moore or Cindy will get more screen time?

but not me.  Either one believes that the First Amendment means what it says or they don't.  I have defended, and will continue to defend, the right of anyone to speak out even if we are on opposite sides of the equation.

That said, I will also do my utmost to prove them wrong when I believe that to be the case.

that's be an interesting axiom to try and stand behind consistently, that airing out family disagreements in public is gutsy.

have to disagree on whether your right to speech carries with it a right to be listened to or a right to be taken seriously.

As far as I can tell she's shooting her mouth off non-stop. What I don't see is why I have an obligation to let her.

Some would also argue that the earth is flat.

Both groups are roughly as credible.

Getting frustrated with this nonsense.

I hadn't realized that the First Amendment came with restrictions as to how long someone could speak out, and that only objections lodged before someone starts speaking are in violation.

And skip the personal attacks...it's unbecoming and would lead one to dismiss your arguments out of hand.

the "support and defend" language that you and I and a whole bunch of other folks have spoken on numerous occasions.  

Cindy Sheehan does not have a right to have people listen or to be taken seriously, any more than a street corner prophet standing on a box at Fisherman's Wharf, but we have a sacred obligation to ensure both she and the prophet get to stand there and speak for as long as they want.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, read for comprehension:

Suggesting that somebody shut up and stop embarassing themselves is not the same as calling for their First Amendment rights to be restricted.

Do I need to draw you a diagram?

I keep seeing "brainwashed" and "exhibitionism" (and worse) being thrown around here, but are there any specific reasons to doubt her motives are what she claims them to be?  Those are notably absent from the post and the agreeing comments.  Those are some pretty grave accusations some people are making here.  Would someone care to back them up?

You'll need more than "she's been seen with Michael Moore" to convince me.  I don't like the guy either, but guilt by association isn't going enough to persuade me.  It shouldn't be enough to persuade you, either, but that's your prerogative.  Anyway, I'm listening.  Tell me why Cindy Sheehan is not what she claims to be.

If you could provide any instance of "pro-war folks" assigning their opinions to dead soldiers, I assume you would have done so.

Take a look at comment #42, right above yours:

The poor women has been brainwashed to the point she rails against everything her son believed in and died for.

No one really knows what her son believed in, and no one really knows how he would have felt about what his mother is doing.  For all we know, he would have been supportive.

it's your site, I respect that.

I relent... as an apologia I will have to admit I never noticed the term before for McCain but you are right, I would let it pass.

I suppose it was the fact that she's actually a woman, if anything, that raised a hackle from me.

Other than that, I understand what you're saying, but I happen not to be one of the people taking part in the Sheehan controversy.  I take it as a given that these parents can be found with various views about this war and their losses, and frankly I expect them to be all over the spectrum and take less instruction from it than many seem to.  In that I suppose our beliefs overlap.

I do think it makes sense for the press to report their views.  But no more from me unless it's requested.

Whether her family tried to quietly talk her out of anything or if she refuted whatever they said and lumped them in with the people who killed her child (which she apparently puts the President and the Iraqi/Saudi insurgents in the same camp).  But it's not really relevant.  Why can't Casey's grandparents and other relatives speak out themselves and say that Mrs. Sheehan isn't speaking for them, and as far as they feel, that she isn't speaking for Casey?  Since when did a mom, no matter how aggrieved, get to be the only person who knew her 24-year old adult son who volunteered to join, volunteered to re-enlist, volunteered to go on the mission that unfortunately cost him his life?  They have a claim to his life and their grief is presumably real as well.  In too many unfortunate cases, nothing tears apart a family more than death, no matter the circumstance.

And as for the modifiers, you should realize that while this is a Republican website, we don't all reflexively hate all Democrats.  Mostly the additional labels are intended to differentiate those Democrats or liberals who are willing to have an honest to god conversation and dialogue from those who think the epitome of political debate is to scream at the top of their lungs that Bush is a Dictator and that Republicans are stupid.

So Michael Moore, Code Pink, Jean Schakowsky, etc. and the ilk are the loony left, moonbats, tinfoil conspirators.

Other Dems are just plain old Dems or liberals.  (I refrain from naming any for fear of them being called traitor by the loonies).

Erick -

You know, I sort of see the point you're making.  I also have a rather barbed retort I'd be delighted to make, but it would neither be welcome or appropriate, so I'll hold my tongue.

I don't know enough about the Sheehan situation to know if she's playing the fool eagerly, willingly, accidentally, or at all.  I'll simply say that, in my book, folks who have lost their kids in a given situation get a pass.

Find someone else to pick on.

Cheers -

happened to be Saddam's violation of UN resolutions. The Administration was hitting the UN over the head with its own resolutions, to undercut the backsliding UN and to justify action by the US.

The point being, there were reasons behind it beyond convincing the American public of the nead to go to war with Iraq.

"America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for."

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=17915

The words below were found at: http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/2005/08/decency-is-not-in-them.html

It cannot be said any better than how it is said below:

[begin]

"The essence of the right-wing smear machine's "outing" of Cindy Sheehan is her supposed flip-flop from supporting President Bush in 2004 to disapproving of him in 2005. As details of this have become clearer, it's obvious the flip-flop is nothing more than a canard. But setting aside the Sheehan story for a moment, have any of the shameless smearsters seen the public opinion polls recently? Here's some breaking news for them: a whole lot of Americans who supported Bush a year ago---including an increasingly large part of his "base"---have turned against him. And that includes many millions of people who haven't lost a parent, child, or sibling in Iraq.

There are so many side issues of shamelessness and crass opportunism in this story it makes my head spin. Think about the gall of a political and media machine "accusing" a private citizen of changing her mind (imagine that!) about an elected and supposedly accountable public official. When did a private citizen supposedly changing her opinion about something rise to the same level as a flip-flop about firing anyone involved in the leaking a CIA agent's name? At what point did the ability to change one's mind about a politician become something to be ridiculed and accused of instead of cherished as a basic right? And it's not as if in the past year we haven't learned anything about the pre-war manipulation of intelligence, as well as the incompetent planning, that resulted in the death of Cindy Sheehan's son and thousands of others like him.

Something else about this story that infuriates me is the vision of feckless, smarmy smearsters and cowards hiding behind keyboards in cities like Washington and New York (and yes, Miami), punching out electronic missives in a pathetic and desperate attempt to impugn the integrity of a woman sitting in the dust and August heat of Texas---a woman who, along with her dead son, embodies everything that's right about this country. The growing division between the professional class of spinning punditry and the vast expanse of Middle America that actually does the working, the fighting and the dying so the pundits can spend their time chattering has never been more clear than with this story."

for saying it. I couldn't disagree with Mrs. Sheehan's politics more strongly than I do, but it takes an enormously stupid presumption for people to say that she is dishonoring her son, or going against his wishes.

Act like one.

Your one bite.

Figures.

Free clue:  there's a difference between "changing her opinion" and changing her story.  I leave it to you to puzzle out.

Given that you've created a dichotomy between "mothers" and "relatives," as if that's somehow meaningful, I don't think words can convey how silly it would be to debate you on this, or indeed, any topic.

But if a family member decides to cross that line, airing an opposing view privately hardly seems an effective response. My hunch is that a public fight is the last thing the relatives wanted, but the only choice they had.

You produce a great deal of value-added. Please don't throw that away with Dread Neocon Cabal silliness.

And trolls who can't even be internally logical in their attacks must now beware flame and acid.

Goodbye, waste of flesh.

I hate to say this, but ignorance and incompetence are just not an excuse anymore.  The fact you cannot do a simple google search right is enough to dismiss you as unworthy of my time.

However, for the others here debating in earnest, here are some links to what Cindy says her son felt about Iraq (oh clueless one)

http://www.thereporter.com/republished/ci_2923921

"But in the end, the family decided against such talk, deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act. In addition, Pat noted that Bush wasn't stumping for votes or trying to gain a political edge for the upcoming election."

The talk was anti-war, which Casey was not.

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/10/int04050.html

"Casey Sheehan re-enlisted with the Army in August of 2003, knowing that his unit would eventually be deployed in Iraq.

...

BuzzFlash: Casey, as I understand it, technically did not have to go to Iraq since he was a field mechanic. Is that correct?

Cindy Sheehan: He was a Humvee mechanic. He re-enlisted in August of 2003 because he didn't want his buddies to do the job by themselves. It's all about what they're doing now -- our soldiers are trying to keep themselves alive and trying to keep each other alive at this point right now."

He re-enlisted - did not have to.  He wanted to.  His mother did not want him to.  She was willing to run him over in a car to give him an out.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0506/S00280.htm

" Casey was a good soldier who loved his family, his community, his country, and his God. He was trustworthy and trusting and the leadership of his country seemingly betrayed him.

...

Casey died saving his buddies and I know so many of our brave young soldiers died doing the same thing"

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=39958

"My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full-well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by a George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11"

In other words, her son was a dupe, an idiot, a fool.

Do you need an interpretor?

I am sorry for her son & I am sorry for Ms. Sheehan, although I am not quite as sorry for her as I might be. Part of my sorrow for her has been diverted into a channel of repugnance by the way she's behaving.

I was glad & relieved to embark on a military adventure when I was 17 years old. I was a high school dropout & had been moping around the house in a depression for over a year. I knew by then that I was in serious trouble as far as prospects in life were concerned. I didn't know how to get a job & my confidence level was so low that I was beyond trying. The manager at the nearby store had looked at snaggle-toothed, gawky me & snickered when I had gathered my small bit of courage & haltingly asked if he had a job. That ridicule had destroyed me, had chopped me down like a sapling in a field.

But here was this recruiter who didn't laugh, didn't roll his eyes or curl his lip with disdain. My Navy recruitment officer in Houston back in 1960 was blunt about the wages, something like "You'll never get rich, boy," & a chart of the pay scale was handed to me. But I wasn't after big money; I was after a life; I was after something to be. I will admit the recruiter did not stress the possibility of danger, but I had seen a lot of war movies & knew that if any shooting started I would be expected to put myself at risk. I was young but not so dumb that I didn't know that.

So her son probably knew but I guess Ms. Sheehan didn't know that her son stood a chance of being killed by dint of joining the Army. No, that was an aspect of military life she had never contemplated. Or maybe she believed that her son's death could only happen during a war of which she approved.

Ms. Sheehan I am sorry for you, but the President did not steal your son from your arms. Your son walked into a recruitment office & must have known, even if you do not, what that meant.

Ms. Sheehan I am sorry for you but your son was not a victim. Your son is a hero. Your son died so you can shed tears on CNN & have a retinue of reporters follow you & so you can be famous for awhile & draw a lot of media attention & be fawned over by those who are against the war.

Ms. Sheehan I am sorry for you but there are others who are pleased, although they will not say so - yes, happy that you have presented them with a perfect storm of a mother to help them blow away & sink Iraq like a scuttled ship. They care nothing for your dead son but they will shed tears - oh yes, a river of hypocritical, sanctimonious tears from avid, eager eyes upon your head & breast & you will shed tears on them, too. And everyone will be covered with tears on CNN & in the pages of the New York Times & probably on NPR & perhaps even Aljazeera. Fame is a wraith that whispers in our ear. Fame is seductive.

Ms. Sheehan I am sorry for you but when you tire of camping in Texas will you pitch your tent outside the door of the Iranian delegation to the United Nations? If you do your new-found friends will be nowhere around. Will you hold up the photographs of your son outside the Syrian embassy in Washington & shed some tears onto their doorstep? If you do you will find that those who now promote your grief better than Barnum promoted freaks will then be gone.

Ms. Sheehan I am sorry for you but do you realize the ones who killed your son are nodding smugly to each other & smiling & chuckling at what you do?

Grief is embracing one another in the alcove of the funeral home. Grief is choking on tears but continuing with the eulogy. Grief is the hollow resonance of dirt falling onto a coffin. Grief is reminiscing with family & friends. Grief is remembering 10 years later what their voice sounded like. Grief is as mute as an empty room. Grief is as hushed as a wreath.

Ms. Sheehan I am sorry for you.

thanks

and many more, and find not a shred of authority for you to state as fact:

"Casey Sheehan believed in changing the ME through freeing Iraq.  That is what he felt and died for."

You must have forgotten to put the "I think..." at the front end of each of those sentences.  You stated your opinion as fact and when you got called on it, you lash out and engage in name-calling.  Nice debate skills.  

What remains is what Cindy Sheehan has stated - that her son did not want to go to Iraq, and that his motivation focused on his loyalty to his fellow soldiers.  This is something that I understand very well, but you apparently have not had the opportunity to experience, and thus do not appreciate.

I can think beyond the literal...

For some, that can be a struggle, I understand.

Casey believed in the cause, the cause was to change the ME through a democratic Iraq.  

You need more than interpretor it seems!

Do you honestly expect me to follow a path of limited reason and thought to a conclusion?  Do I sound like a liberal?

Those were her words.  I believe I also clearly stated she has twisted his views as she has sunk further into the leftward fever swamps.  So early on it was clear he wanted to go and she did not, and as time progressed she stopped admitting his views so clearly.  Now he was simply a dupe.  

You can close your eyes - your lack of insight doesn't effect me one bit

I never slung mud at Cindy.  I slung mud at the liberal low lifes using her grief to push their anti-war cause - until she has no more utility and they toss her aside.

I feel for Cindy and her loss.  I feel disgust with the left - but that is not new.

Maybe you are not protecting Cindy, you feel affronted yourself and use Cindy as an excuse???

You seemed to have an acute inability to process information.  Like if you READ the note they rest of the family wants to respect Casey with quiet respect and not by grandstanding in front of the cameras and press.

I means, duh, when the note says they wish to avoid the media frenzy what part did you miss????

Thankyou.

I also feel sorry for Cindy Sheehan ... but her dishonesty, particularly around the memory of her son, is repugnant to me as a mother.

Being a mom carries along with it certain responsiblities. One of them is to not exploit your children for the sake of your own enterprises.

With her many pro left, anti war stances, the only thing that gives her any legitimacy is that she is the mother of a dead soldier.

What's shaking down is not so much grief at her son's death, but the exploitation of his death to give her a measure of respectability, and a certain position of unassailibility (which is rapidly eroding)

And, yes. I said exploitation. If she were not the mother of a fallen hero, she'd be just another moonbat.

Now, I do think that Sheehan is being manipulated by leftist groups ... but, you know, as a mom ... you need to be able to put your foot down, even on yourself, when a group, or a friend, or a parent is exploiting your child. If you do not do it ... who will?

I'm aware of the leftist reponse that she might think that Bush exploited Casey, and I do not think that is valid, for oh, so many documented reasons.

Anyway, this is the lady that agrees that her son gave his life to promote her anti-war activities, and she did kindly offer to run him over with a car to keep him from going to Iraq.

Also, this lady is giving sound bytes to Al Quada. That's like MADD appearing in a Budweiser commercial, or Joe Walsh being the keynote speaker at NAMBLA.

"Also, this lady is giving sound bytes to Al Quada."

This "aid and comfort to the enemy" line in the information age is silly. You can't control it, and Al Qaeda can find reasons to hate us without even trying. Personally, I think live demonstrations of free speech show the strength of our republic.

Ms. Sheehan cries on cue. Ms. Sheehan waits for the best camera angle before kneeling down in front of the mock grave near Crawford. Ms. Sheehan is becoming more & more media-savvy & in her tent outside Crawford after the newshounds have gone to bed Ms. Sheehan polishes her presentation before laying her sorrowing self down to sleep.

Casey Sheehan's grave is a lonely, deserted place of silence. There are no video cameras there, no microphones, no crowds jostling for a better view.

In dark rooms in Fallujah they take heart & vow to Allah to shoot more wicked American soldiers in the face & yearn for Paradise.

In Syria & Iran they grin as they watch Aljazeera.

Osama bin Laden in his hideout in the mountains dismisses the messenger who brings such strange good news, strokes his beard & marvels & thanks Allah for Ms. Sheehan.

O Fame, you are truly the most seductive of all the wraiths that haunt our psyche.

Ms. Sheehan I am sorry for you.

... two kinds of people throughout history; optimists and pessimists. The world was built by optimists. Unfortiunately optimists have to keep rebuilding because it keeps getting torn down by pessimists.

How is a guest supposed to act? People cannot post different views here? Certainly you are not opposed to free expression of opinions here, are you?

I simply posted an opinion from another blog. If the best commentary you have is "You are a guest - act like one", well my friend that is pretty weak I'd say. As Sean Hannity might say, 'Listen, you might learn something'.

And your last line: "Your one bite." What is up with that? Please don't tell me this forum is run like a Presidential Town Hall Meeting - where only one ideology is welcome. You are not afraid to debate are you?

Given that you've created a dichotomy between "mothers" and "relatives," as if that's somehow meaningful, I don't think words can convey how silly it would be to debate you on this, or indeed, any topic.

I didn't create a dichotomy between "mothers" and "relatives", I pointed out the dichotomy between how the two are being treated here, and how incredibly hypocritical and ironic the parent commenter's statement is. I could diagram exactly what I meant, step by step, but I assumed that everyone here was capable of a certain level of reading comprehension when not skimming for the purpose of scoring cheap ripostes.

If you can't grasp why my point was meaningful, by all means, please have the grace to admit it and ask for clarification. If you disagree, say so and explain why. But this "I'm taking my toys and going home" sort of response, while rhetorically cute, doesn't reflect well on the writer.

Yes. Good point about freedom of speech.

How about the point that responsibility goes along with that freedom of speech? For example, the responsibility to understand that your words carry consequences.

Or, do you honestly think it's a good thing to yell "fire" in a crowded movie theatre if you really, really feel like doing it?

If you found out a MADD mother was scripting commercials for Budweiser, would you take her with a grain of salt, or celebrate her right to speak out in favor of alcoholic beverages?

There's a trade off here. I wish public figures would consider the EFFECTS of their words.

Al Quada hates us. But, as the mother of a dead US soldier, her words carry gravity which is surely delightful to clever Islamo fascists, looking for recruiting tools. But, I don't think she or her supporters care about that.

I didn't create a dichotomy between "mothers" and "relatives", I pointed out the dichotomy between how the two are being treated here, and how incredibly hypocritical and ironic the parent commenter's statement is.

No, actually, what you did was imply that somehow the two were identical in protection, but different in quality.

But I digress.

I understood precisely what you meant. You meant, in a trollish manner, to imply that the other poster was being a hypocrite. I simply noted that the manner in which you did so was profoundly stupid.

That is all.

Now, two last points:

If you can't grasp why my point was meaningful, by all means, please have the grace to admit it and ask for clarification. If you disagree, say so and explain why.

This would inherently mean that I thought your point was worthy of debate, or that you were interested in debate. As it's not, and you're not, I felt -- indeed, if I may, feel -- no need to engage it or you.

But this "I'm taking my toys and going home" sort of response, while rhetorically cute, doesn't reflect well on the writer.

You presume incorrectly: I don't care what you think. You're not special. So far, you're a rhetorically challenged troll who has added, from a brief review of your comments, precisely nothing to any debate here.

Head back to ObiWi. You can join the chanting chorus of the damned and feel more at home. They might even care what you have to say.

And while I could go through a lengthy explanation of your errors, I'll leave it at this:

Ciao, 'bat.

how's that?

... and I think Pat Tillman made it pretty clear why he made his decision to fight. Ted Rall is the one who missed Pat Tillman's funeral.

Everything I have seen indicates he believed in what we are doing in Iraq, and his mother was at odds with him on this from the beginning. If you wish to believe his mother to the exclusion of other dissenting family members and those who fought alongside him, then you are effectively letting "anti-war folks" assign their opinions to a dead soldier.