Update from Cindy Sheehan
It was just announced at the Rally that Cindy's mother is out of ICU and she will be wrapping up a couple of things and then she will be on her way back home (to Camp Casey)
-Bily
Sunday, August 21, 2005
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- Steve Brooks song from Sunday rally
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- Bruce and Annie from Texas
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- Kim reports from Camp Casey 2
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Peacenik paper fawns over antiwar mom
An occasional column in which the Los Angeles Times invites outside critics to wallop a Southern California newspaper, even when it has a new editor and a new publisher who would no doubt prefer a bri
By Patrick Frey
Patrick Frey runs a blog called Patterico's Pontifications (www.patterico.com).
August 21, 2005
I CANNOT IMAGINE what it would be like to lose my child the way Cindy Sheehan lost her son, Casey, in Iraq. The bereaved mother, who until Thursday had been camped outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, has every right to protest the war, and her demonstration was certainly news.
But in its apparent zeal to portray Sheehan as the Rosa Parks of the antiwar movement, the Los Angeles Times has omitted facts and perspectives that might undercut her message or explain the president's reluctance to meet with her again.
For example, The Times uncritically reported Sheehan's claim that the president had behaved callously in a June 2004 meeting with her and her husband, refusing to look at pictures of Casey or listen to stories about him. The Times claimed without qualification that Sheehan "came away from that meeting dissatisfied and angry."
But the article failed to mention that Sheehan had previously described Bush as sincere and sympathetic in the meeting. According to an interview with her hometown paper, the Vacaville Reporter, Sheehan had said that although she was upset about the war, she decided not to confront the president — who clearly left a favorable impression: "I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis…. I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."
Of that trip, Sheehan said: "That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together." In the 11 articles and columns about Sheehan that The Times had run on its news pages as of Friday, there is no hint of her previous praise for the president.
Ironically, columnists Jonathan Chait and Margaret Carlson evidently assumed that The Times had informed its readers about Sheehan's contradictions, and ran columns that unconvincingly tried to reconcile Sheehan's varying versions. But even the Washington Post — no bastion of the fabled vast right-wing conspiracy — saw discrepancies between Sheehan's former and current descriptions of her meeting with the president.
Lending credence to Sheehan's earlier positive account, Newsweek has reported that families in similar meetings have been impressed by Bush's "emotionalism and his sincerity." Inclusion of that fact would certainly have changed the tone of any story about Sheehan in The Times.
Sheehan's changing accounts of her meeting with Bush are relevant to understanding the president's decision not to meet with her again. So are her descriptions of the president in a Dallas speech reported by leftist newsletter Counterpunch as a "lying bastard," a "maniac" and the leader of a "destructive neocon cabal." In an article for CommonDreams.org, she called that supposed cabal "the "biggest terrorist outfit in the world."
She also has turned her son's death into a tax protest, refusing to pay her income taxes for 2004, the year her son died, reportedly saying in the Dallas speech: "You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny." Sheehan's use of such inflammatory rhetoric sheds light on why Bush likely sees little upside in a public confrontation with her. But you would never know about these statements from reading The Times' news pages.
Nor would you learn that Casey Sheehan reenlisted after the war started. And only The Times' April 2004 obituary for the 24-year-old Army specialist noted that he bravely volunteered for the rescue mission in which he was killed by terrorists.
Likewise, while The Times reported that Cindy's husband, Patrick Sheehan, has filed for divorce — which may or may not pertain to her recent activities — it has not mentioned that other members of Sheehan's family have clearly distanced themselves from her protest, as reported in the San Jose Mercury News.
Of course, hundreds of mothers across the country also continue to support the war despite having lost their own sons in Iraq. These mothers have no less moral authority than Cindy Sheehan, but their views have been sorely lacking in The Times' unbalanced coverage of Sheehan's protest.
Also missing is the perspective of Iraqis who lost loved ones to the bloodthirsty reign of Saddam Hussein, during which 300,000 to 1 million civilians were slaughtered. An Iraqi named Mohammed at the blog Iraq the Model (iraqthemodel.blogspot.com) recently explained the importance of that fact, in a moving message addressed to Sheehan: "Your face doesn't look strange to me at all; I see it every day on endless numbers of Iraqi women who were struck by losses like yours. Our fellow countrymen and women were buried alive, cut to pieces and thrown in acid pools and some were fed to the wild dogs….
"I ask you in the name of God or whatever you believe in; do not waste your son's blood."
Sheehan probably would gain more from a single meeting with Mohammed than a second meeting with Bush. Times readers also would benefit from occasional exposure to perspectives such as Mohammed's — as well as the missing facts about Sheehan's antiwar activism.
Rational people can disagree whether the war in Iraq is justified. But a newspaper's job is to report all relevant facts and present different perspectives, not just those that suit one particular viewpoint.
By that measure, The Times has woefully failed its readers with its one-sided coverage of the Cindy Sheehan story.
7:10 PM
Cindy Sheehan: A pawn of the left, a target of the right, a symbol of a nation
She's not Jane Fonda.
She's not Rosa Parks.
Cindy Sheehan is a mother who lost a child, a daughter who has rushed to her mother's bedside, and a woman whose husband just filed for divorce.
She is also a symbol: The mourning mother who became the Neon Madonna.
Sheehan is a 21st-century phenomenon whose vigil outside President Bush's ranch has evolved into a carefully orchestrated show that is being promoted by the left with slick Web site links and downloadable window signs.
A show that has drawn the fire of conservative pundits and bloggers who recoil at Sheehan's attacks on Bush as the world's greatest terrorist and blanch at any suggestion that she speaks for the families of soldiers serving in Iraq.
Sheehan's instant celebrity and the resulting backlash reveal as much as recent polls about how conflicted the nation is becoming about the war in Iraq.
Has Sheehan been exploited by leftist groups that have always opposed the war? Sure.
Has she been strafed by conservative advocates who always supported it? You bet.
Has she been ignored by the president? No.
Sheehan and her husband were among 17 grieving families that met with George W. Bush in June 2004. According to an account of that meeting in her local paper, The Reporter of Vacaville, Calif., Sheehan came away saying, "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."
Critics use this as evidence that she's a flip-flop puppet of the left. But the 2004 news account also says that Sheehan was unhappy with Bush's handling of the war, and that she had wanted to ask him if her son's death would make the world safer. She didn't ask that, the story says, because the family decided against confrontation.
Shortly after the meeting, Sheehan was making news as an anti-war activist. This summer, she has confrontation very much on her mind.
Sheehan has every right to protest. She has sacrificed more than most Americans. She deserves our respect.
But Bush cannot be fairly accused of ducking the grieving. He has met with about 900 family members of soldiers killed in Iraq, according to the Aug. 22 edition of Newsweek. Many of those family members told Newsweek they were truly impressed by the depth of the president's emotion over their losses.
Nor is it reasonable to follow the anti-war demands to bring the troops home immediately. It would be foolish and dangerous to pull out now, before Iraq is stable enough to resist the terrorist elements that are wreaking havoc there. Even many who oppose the war recognize that.
For those who don't recognize that - for those who have long opposed both the war and Bush - Sheehan offers what appears to be a moral high ground on which to gather. It's no surprise they scrambled up to join her.
Sheehan has the right credentials to be both patriotic and against the war: Her 24-year-old son, Casey, died in Iraq.
In addition, she took her protest to Crawford, Texas, at the right time: Bush had just begun a five-week vacation and only 38 percent of Americans approved of the way he was handling the war.
The left glommed onto her, and the right threw stones.
But the motivations and emotions involved in Sheehan's protest, and the nation's reaction to it, are far more complex than extremists on either side are likely to acknowledge.
Cindy Sheehan is not just a hero or villain. She's a woman whose grief has touched a nation that is still struggling to adjust to a world where terrorists claim the right to cause grief at any time.
7:22 PM
It's amazing that people who practice civil discourse are attacked for changing their mind, yet Bush does it EVERY day! What's the reason for war today Mr. Bush? Condy?
Cindy changed her mind about meeting the pres. after NEW information keeps surfacing about the circumstances leading to war. If we never changed our minds the world would be flat, African Americans would be less than a whole human being and the sun would revolve around the earth.
5:42 PM
I want to remind everyone not to get too upset when these desperate Right Wing Nuts equate our dissent as Treason. Remember, you are in very good company. You should wear that lable as a badge of honour!
Every 4th of July we celebrate the winning of our Rights and Freedoms and the men who were responsible for winning them. We have erected statues of their likenesses on the sides of mountains, in our Capital city and in every park in small town America. Yet, it must be pointed out that they were most literally, traitors, at least King George thought so. They would have been hung by the neck until dead if they had been caught fomenting rebellion, and that is no Joke. Ben Franklin stated it most eloquently, "We must hang together or surely we shall hang seperately!"
August 18th was the Anniversary of King GEORGE declaring the Colonies in rebellion. You see, one mans' Traitor is another mans' Patriot, but, It is still heartening that all these years later, we can stand outside the home of the President of the United States and excercise our right to dissent and all he can do to us is call us nasty names!! Neener, Neener, Meener!!!!
You Go Girl!!!!
8:49 PM
In the 1700's, America fought for her freedom from Britain.
In the 1800's, America fought for expansion and reform.
In the 1900's, America fought Axis countries whose sole mission was to dominate the world.
It is a new millenium, and America still fights for her freedom.
Do not oppose America.
Support America. Support Bush.
9:34 AM
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