God Bless Cindy Sheehan

>>due to the war, he lost three of his limbs

>>and is in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

>

>Oh how I hate to do this but I must. The Dems love championing

>Max Clelland's heroism in regards to his loss of his limbs.

>Although, Max Clelland is a true hero for fighting for his

>nation in Vietnam and I salute him for that, he did not,

>however, lose his limbs doing something heroic. The FACT is

>that he was on the base in Vietnam and was on a helicopter

>that was just starting to lift off when he decided to jump off

>and go with his buddies to get a beer instead of where the

>helicopter was headed (which was NOT into battle). As he was

>walking away from the helicopter he saw a grenade on the

>ground, picked it up thinking it wasn't live, and it blew up

>in his hand - taking three limbs with it. Even Clelland has

>rejected the characterization of his accident as being herioc.

At least former Senator Cleland served his country during a time of war. Where was the current commander in chief during that particular time frame. I think Bill Maher's said it quite nicely by describing the National Guard Unit as the " Champagne Unit ". This is the same George W. Bush now some thirty odd years later sending men and women are actually want to serve their country and unfortunately they're being sent in harms way. In the President's radio address yesterday morning he tried to invoke the memory of 9/11 for justifying the war on terror. Not to be outdone Mr Cleland also invoked the memory of 9/11 by pointing out that the supposed financier of the 9/11 attacks Osama Bin Ladin is still at large.

BTW, since Mr Bush and his national security team tried to lay claim that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from North Korea in late 2002 to build a nuclear device. Speaking along those lines, how's he doing with North Korea, you know the country with two supposed nuclear bombs. It's been now four years since President told the North Koreans to give up their quest for atomic bombs or face the consequences. What's the latest progress, oh my he doesn't have much to show. He's even trying to get the Chinese to do his dirty work and they dont seem to be pushing the North Koreans that much. I thought Republicans were supposed to brilliant in foreign policy. Apparently not,

>>Unfortunately no one seems to be talking about the number of

>>injured soldiers coming back,

>

>Are you JOKING??? If they're not being allowed to talk about

>it, then how is it that they're talking about it and you're

>hearing about it?

No I'm not joking, Max Cleland is one of a handful of people to talk about it. I never said that the media in general are not allowed to talk about such matters. When was the last time you saw a report about the number of injured soldiers coming back from Iraq.

>>It makes me angry that the

>>media is afraid to talk about these things.

>

>You need to stop watching The Food Channel and watch, CNN,

>ABC, NBC, PBS, CBS or read The New York Times, The Washington

>Post, The LA Times, USA Today, Newsweek, or TIME.

You should start watching the BBC, ITN, Sky Television and read " The Economist ", Wallstreet Journal, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Sun, London Times, on the odd occassion Financial Times and even US News & World Report.

I know it might be a bit difficult but set your sails for a bigger horizon and gain more knowledge. Also get a grip guy and cut down on the caffeine and alcohol.

RE: Arianna Huffington responds to FFF's talking points

BoN, why should someone get a SECOND meeting, though? Given the number of minutes in a day & the population of the country, most of us will never get a FIRST meeting. I feel for a grieving mother who has lost her son. I'm not sure I understand why she should get TWO meetings with the POTUS, though. When she doesn't get the answers she wants at that meeting, would you say she should get a third? Does everyone who doesn't like a policy have a "right" to a meeting with the POTUS? How about a follow-up meeting?

RE: Arianna Huffington responds to FFF's talking points

Who can know the mind of a grieving mother? Obviously, things have changed for her since that first meeting. Shouldn't the President be available to the people? I am sure he has had more than one meeting with wealthy oilmen seeking his attention. He has other Gold Star mothers that he has met with on more than one occasion. The difference is that this time, he is not meeting her according to a script and on his terms. Read the article I posted about the unfeeling president.

>>You can't "use" someone when you're ignoring them.

>>

>>Obviously yours,

>>

>>FFF

>

>Ignoring them??? FFF, you've sunk to a new low with

>deliberate lying.

>Fox "News" has been running a smear campaign against her non

>stop. You used to be more clever than this.

Q: Did I say ANYTHING about FOX News?

A: No.

The PRESIDENT is the one who's ignoring her. How can HE be using her when he's fucking IGNORING HER?

Since the written word is too hard to decipher for many of you, am I going to have to begin incorporating interpretive dance into my posts to get my points across?

Frustratedly yours,

FFF

>The PRESIDENT is the one who's ignoring her. How can HE be

>using her when he's fucking IGNORING HER?

>

>Since the written word is too hard to decipher for many of

>you, am I going to have to begin incorporating interpretive

>dance into my posts to get my points across?

Apparently so, as your ability to communicate seems to be waning. You complained about how Democrats are supposedly using Cindy Sheehan for political advantage and the implication in your statement was the Republicans were ignoring Sheehan in general, not the child regent in specific.

I responded by pointing out how the Republican media, aka Fox "News", is using Cindy as their second cause du jour.

In fact, from this article by Fox "News" personality Tony Snow, it appears that the Republicans are preparing to Swift Boat Cindy Sheehan big time. So much for ignoring her.

It's 1968 in Crawford, Texas

August 18 '05

By Tony Snow

Published: Friday, August 19, 2005 10:09 AM EDT

E-mail this story | Print this page

Cindy Sheehan's supporters want you to call her Mother Sheehan — not because she conducts herself in a saintly manner, nor because nurture defines her nature, but because it makes her an easier sell.

Here's Internet activist, "dataguy": "We should call her ‘Mother Sheehan' ... ‘Mother Sheehan' is her title, and expresses her ceremonial status as a bereaved mother, calling forth over the dead body of her son. She is not a person now, she is a mother, which is not an expression of her individuality, but rather the expression of her eternal character: the mother, the bringer of life who has been wronged by state power."

This vaporous encomium makes explicit what many have suspected from the start: Cindy Sheehan's backers and financiers do not consider her a "person." To them, she is a useful idiot, whom they will adore until the TV cameras go away.

Reporters get the joke, which is why they treat her with a wary sensitivity normally reserved for aggressive panhandlers. After all, this is a woman who has likened terrorist lawyer Lynn Stewart to Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird"; who has done Dick Durbin one better by calling the president the most prolific mass murderer alive; who has earned the praise and admiration of David Duke by calling Operation Iraqi Freedom a "war for Israel"; and who has accepted support from Code Pink, an organization that advocated aid to terrorists in Fallujah. Journalists would rather gargle acid than listen to such gormless gibberish, which is why they primly avoid asking her questions about her beliefs.

Even her personal recollections seem dotty and odd. When she and her husband met with President Bush in June 2004, she greeted the commander in chief by asking: "Why are we here? We're both Democrats. We didn't vote for you. We're never gonna vote for you!" Meanwhile, she never talks in detail about her son — other than to mention that he is dead.

This is not how grieving moms express their "eternal character." It's what happens when people get utterly carried away with politics, transforming themselves from concerned citizens into boorish zealots.

Her "why are we here" remark does set a tone, however, and those of like minds and sensibilities have joined Mother Sheehan in her demand that Bush alter his vacation plans, so he can hold another audience with her.

These fellow squatters include a man who refers to himself as Mr. Foot Massager. Mr. Foot Massager massages feet. Actually, he limits his ministrations to two feet, both of which belong to Mother Sheehan. He has become her designated bunion kneader.

The Merry Band also includes Patient Zero, a young fellow with a shock of hair the color of Tang. He has decorated his classical guitar with a sign, "My other guitar is a syringe," and a cryptic, spray-painted equation: "1001 = 0." He also comes equipped with a placard, which he held as the president drove by: "Honk if your kids are in Iraq."

The same goes for the cadre of nostalgic malcontents, which includes septuagenarian ex-war protesters, a confirmed beatnik and some people who regularly wear shoes. Their bodies are there, but alas, most of them abandoned their minds in 1968.

The "Peaceful Occupation of Crawford," as Sheehan has dubbed it, seems a protest less against war than against good manners, deodorant soap and the march of time. Yet the most heart-rending feature of the entire spectacle is Cindy Sheehan herself. She seems to believe this transient crew will help her piece together her shattered life — a dead son, a wrecked marriage, a shredded family. But how long can one lean on people who don't even call themselves by their own names?

Sheehan, taking her moment in the sun far too seriously, recently declared, "I am the spark the universe chose." That might be more true than she realizes. Like an ember whirling into the night sky, her spark will ascend, then darken, leaving behind a peacenik version of Courtney Love — an ashen specter you might expect to see standing by a roadside, bearing a hand-lettered sign: "I was somebody. Once."

Examiner columnist Tony Snow is host of "The Tony Snow Show" on FOX News Radio and "Weekend Live With Tony Snow" on FOX News Channel.

http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/08/19/opinion/op-ed/23oped18snow.txt

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan

By FRANK RICH

CINDY SHEEHAN couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing. On this Aug. 6 the president was no less determined to shrug off bad news. Though 14 marine reservists had been killed days earlier by a roadside bomb in Haditha, his national radio address that morning made no mention of Iraq. Once again Mr. Bush was in his bubble, ensuring that he wouldn't see Ms. Sheehan coming. So it goes with a president who hasn't foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001.

When these setbacks happen in Iraq itself, the administration punts. But when they happen at home, there's a game plan. Once Ms. Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war. The Swift Boating is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam.

The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam résumés: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat described by the first President Bush as "courageous" and "a true American hero" for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail.

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real."

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the "liberal media," we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s.

The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to Cindy Sheehan's "wacko" rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget about her dead son. But if much of the 24/7 media has taken the bait, much of the public has not.

The backdrops against which Ms. Sheehan stands - both that of Mr. Bush's what-me-worry vacation and that of Iraq itself - are perfectly synergistic with her message of unequal sacrifice and fruitless carnage. Her point would endure even if the messenger were shot by a gun-waving Crawford hothead or she never returned to Texas from her ailing mother's bedside or the president folded the media circus by actually meeting with her.

The public knows that what matters this time is Casey Sheehan's story, not the mother who symbolizes it. Cindy Sheehan's bashers, you'll notice, almost never tell her son's story. They are afraid to go there because this young man's life and death encapsulate not just the noble intentions of those who went to fight this war but also the hubris, incompetence and recklessness of those who gave the marching orders.

Specialist Sheehan was both literally and figuratively an Eagle Scout: a church group leader and honor student whose desire to serve his country drove him to enlist before 9/11, in 2000. He died with six other soldiers on a rescue mission in Sadr City on April 4, 2004, at the age of 24, the week after four American security workers had been mutilated in Falluja and two weeks after he arrived in Iraq. This was almost a year after the president had declared the end of "major combat operations" from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

According to the account of the battle by John F. Burns in The Times, the insurgents who slaughtered Specialist Sheehan and his cohort were militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric. The Americans probably didn't stand a chance. As Mr. Burns reported, members of "the new Iraqi-trained police and civil defense force" abandoned their posts at checkpoints and police stations "almost as soon as the militiamen appeared with their weapons, leaving the militiamen in unchallenged control."

Yet in the month before Casey Sheehan's death, Mr. Rumsfeld typically went out of his way to inflate the size and prowess of these Iraqi security forces, claiming in successive interviews that there were "over 200,000 Iraqis that have been trained and equipped" and that they were "out on the front line taking the brunt of the violence." We'll have to wait for historians to tell us whether this and all the other Rumsfeld propaganda came about because he was lied to by subordinates or lying to himself or lying to us or some combination thereof.

As The Times reported last month, even now, more than a year later, a declassified Pentagon assessment puts the total count of Iraqi troops and police officers at 171,500, with only "a small number" able to fight insurgents without American assistance. As for Moktada al-Sadr, he remains as much a player as ever in the new "democratic" Iraq. He controls one of the larger blocs in the National Assembly. His loyalists may have been responsible for last month's apparently vengeful murder of Steven Vincent, the American freelance journalist who wrote in The Times that Mr. Sadr's followers had infiltrated Basra's politics and police force.

Casey Sheehan's death in Iraq could not be more representative of the war's mismanagement and failure, but it is hardly singular. Another mother who has journeyed to Crawford, Celeste Zappala, wrote last Sunday in New York's Daily News of how her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was also killed in April 2004 - in Baghdad, where he was providing security for the Iraq Survey Group, which was charged with looking for W.M.D.'s "well beyond the admission by David Kay that they didn't exist."

As Ms. Zappala noted with rage, her son's death came only a few weeks after Mr. Bush regaled the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association banquet in Washington with a scripted comedy routine featuring photos of him pretending to look for W.M.D.'s in the Oval Office.

"We'd like to know if he still finds humor in the fabrications that justified the war that killed my son," Ms. Zappala wrote.

(Perhaps so: surely it was a joke that one of the emissaries Mr. Bush sent to Cindy Sheehan in Crawford was Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser who took responsibility for allowing the 16 errant words about doomsday uranium into the president's prewar State of the Union speech.)

Mr. Bush's stand-up shtick for the Beltway press corps wasn't some aberration; it was part of the White House's political plan for keeping the home front cool. America was to yuk it up, party on and spend its tax cuts heedlessly while the sacrifice of an inadequately manned all-volunteer army in Iraq was kept out of most Americans' sight and minds. This is why the Pentagon issued a directive at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom forbidding news coverage of "deceased military personnel returning to or departing from" air bases. It's why Mr. Bush, unlike Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, has not attended funeral services for the military dead. It's why January's presidential inauguration, though nominally dedicated to the troops, was a gilded $40 million jamboree at which the word Iraq was banished from the Inaugural Address.

THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Mr. Bush's motorcade left a grieving mother in the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far. The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last backfired, just as the strategy of Swift Boating the war's critics has reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury in Washington. The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets.

But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/opinion/21rich.html

?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists

RE: Arianna Huffington responds to FFF's talking points

>Shouldn't the President be available to the people?

Not on demand, no.

This particular citizen deserves no more & no less than any of the rest of us. She has, in fact, gotten more than most. Should I demand a meeting with the President because my life changed a bit last night when I was dumped by the boyfriend for the second time? (Note: my dumping of him was scheduled for a week from now, but the bastard beat me to the punch!)

Cindy Sheehan, as I've read on this site, has already talked to (or, has been talked to by) the president once. Are we saying she had a one-on-one chat session with Bush? Did she get a chance to really ask the questions she needs to ask?

I can only imagine (and it's true, I'm totally unaware of the history of this story) her first "talk" with Bush went something like this:

BUSH: Hello. God bless you Ma'am. How are you holding up?"

CINDY: Hello Mr. President, I'm doing OK, thank you.

BUSH: Your son's a real hero, I hope you know that...

CINDY: Yes, Mr. President...

BUSH: (checking his watch)... a real patriot. God Bless you ma'am. America thanks you.

CINDY: Thank you Mr. President...

This is what I imagine... and it's no surprise that after the grief and shock wore off a little, that she might have a bit more to say. A few more questions to ask.

As for those who counter that there are members of her family who disagree with her, why on Earth would you think that their opinions are more valid than hers?

Trix

>I can only imagine (and it's true, I'm totally unaware of

>the history of this story) her first "talk" with Bush went

>something like this:

You don't have to "imagine" anything about Ms. Sheehan's first meeting with Presdient Bush, Trixie. Cindy Sheehan gave an interview afterwards and this is what she said about it:

________________________________

CINDY 2004

THE REPORTER of Vacaville, CA published an account of Cindy Sheehan's visit with the president at Fort Lewis near Seattle on June 24, 2004:

"'I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,' Cindy said after their meeting. 'I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith.'

"The meeting didn't last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.

"The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.

"For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.

For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.

"'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,' Cindy said."

CINDY 2005

Sheehan's current comments are a striking departure.

She vowed on Sunday to continue her protest until she can personally ask Bush: "Why did you kill my son?"

In an interview on CNN, she claimed Bush "acted like it was party" when she met him last year...

_______________________________

This whole sorry spectacle - demanding that the leader of the free world in the middle of a war stop what he is doing for no reason other than to wallow in some Oprah moment with a woman he ALREADY met - has had one serious benefit. It reveals what attributes the typical liberal glorifies.

And, in particular, it's hardly a surprise to see liberal gay men worshipping and glorifying a sad, weeping, crying, peace-cliche-spouting, middle-aged woman wallowing in despair and choking on her tears. Aren't these the very attributes we want in our leaders? Don't we all hate President Bush because he's not enough like Cindy Sheehan? Don't so many of you worshipping this woman identify so powerfully with the tearful, bawling behavior she is publicly and relentlessly displaying?

Yeah - if only we had more Cindy Sheehans in the world, those terrorists would sure leave us alone! Come on George Bush - stop with all those security briefings and meetings with world leaders - get down there and cry with this woman - share your emotions with her - hug her - that's what Presidents of the U.S. are supposed to be doing!

Doug, there were some parts you left out from that article:

**********

"We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled," Cindy said. "The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached."

The 10 minutes of face time with the president could have given the family a chance to vent their frustrations or ask Bush some of the difficult questions they have been asking themselves, such as whether Casey's sacrifice would make the world a safer place.

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 meeting didn't last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.

*************

Obviously, Cindy has come to the conclusion that George Bush has not made her son's death count for something. Some of us have felt that way from the beginning.

As much as I opposed the war in Iraq from the start, because it had nothing to do with the war on terror, I believe we have no choice now but to see it through. Pulling out now would be as colossal an error as starting the war was.