More on Cindy Sheehan

The mainstream media have presented Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who is now camped out at the entrance to George Bush’s ranch in Texas, as merely a concerned and grieving mother.

In fact, she’s a leftist with a long history of anti-war protest.

For example, on January 24, 2005 she published on the leftist website Common Dreams an article titled “The Dangerous Gold Star Families.” Among her other incendiary comments were the following:

If we were granted an audience with him, we didn’t really expect Mr. Rumsfeld to be truthful with us or even polite to us considering his past history of being so sarcastically untruthful and blatantly rude. The real reason I wanted to meet with Rumsfeld was so he could see the face of my son, Spc Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Sadr City on 04/04/04. I wanted him to look me in the face and see my red swollen eyes and to see all the lines that grief has etched. I wanted him to see the unbearable pain his ignorance and arrogance has caused me and my family. I wanted him to know that his actions have terrible consequences.

Months before she showed up in Crawford, Texas, she was part of a traveling left-wing road show. According to the June 14, 2005 Lexington Herald-Leader:

The president of Gold Star Families for Peace, a mother who lost a son in Iraq, criticized the United States’ “illegal and unjust war” yesterday during an interfaith rally in Lexington.

Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., accused President Bush of lying to the nation about a war which has consumed tens of billions of dollars and claimed more than 1,700 American lives — including the life of Army Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan.

Sheehan was one of more than a dozen activists who were scheduled to speak at yesterday’s anti-war rally at the Red Mile, which was organized by the Clergy and Laity Network and co-sponsored by dozens of liberal religious organizations.

“We’re watching you very carefully and we’re going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people,” she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. “Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ,” she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered.

This sort of rhetoric comes easy for her. On the Front Page Magazine website, a May 2, 2005 post tells of her participation in a leftist conclave at San Francisco State University. Her rhetoric was typically inflammatory.

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

The media may have a liberal bias, but this sort of bombast is beyond the pale for the standard media liberals. Which is why her history and her statements are usually sanitized.

Sheehan’s distrust of the Administration extends to outright conspiracy theories. In a “Memorial Day Interview” on lewrockwell.com, she says the following:

The official story of his death was that Casey was killed in an ambush in Sadr City by hostile fire. I have some speculative evidence that he was actually killed by friendly fire. The military lied to us and has told us conflicting stories. My friend Fernando Del Solar Suarez was lied to and told that his son was shot in the head, when he stepped on a US cluster bomb.

The reality of her son’s death is in fact well known. He not only enlisted in the military, he voluntarily reenlisted, knowing he was likely to be sent to Iraq. As a mechanic in his unit, he didn’t have to, and was never ordered to go into the battle that cost him his life. Rather, when some members of his unit ran into resistence, he took up his weapon and went to help them.

He was a hero. But the story of his heroism has been overshadowed by the extremist antics of his mother.