A very good article on Sheehan. She is very well spoken.

> MotherJones.com Our Imploding President
> An Interview With Cindy Sheehan
> Tom Engelhardt
> September 29 , 2005
>
> My brief immersion in the almost unimaginable life of Cindy Sheehan
> begins on the Friday before the massive antiwar march past the White
> House. I take a cab to an address somewhere at the edge of Washington
> DC -- a city I don't know well -- where I'm to have a quiet hour with
> her. Finding myself on a porch filled with peace signs and vases of
> roses (assumedly sent for Sheehan), I ring the doorbell, only to be
> greeted by two barking dogs but no human beings. Checking my cell
> phone, I discover a message back in New York from someone helping
> Sheehan out. Good Morning America has just called; plans have
> changed. Can I make it to Constitution and 15th by five? I rush to
> the nearest major street and, from a bus stop, fruitlessly attempt to
> hail a cab. The only empty one passes me by and a young black man
> next to me offers an apologetic commentary: "I hate to say this, but
> they probably think you're hailing it for me and they don't want to
> pick me up." On his recommendation, I board a bus, leaping off
> (twenty blocks of crawl later) at the sight of a hotel with a cab
> stand.
>
> A few minutes before five, I'm finally standing under the Washington
> monument, beneath a cloud-dotted sky, in front of "Camp Casey," a
> white tent with a blazing red "Bring them home tour" banner. Behind
> the tent is a display of banged-up, empty soldiers' boots; and then,
> stretching almost as far as the eye can see or the heart can feel, a
> lawn of small white crosses, nearly two thousand of them, some with
> tiny American flags planted in the nearby ground. In front of the
> serried ranks of crosses is a battered looking metal map of the
> United States rising off a rusty base. Cut out of it are the
> letters, "America in Iraq, killed ___, wounded ___." (It's wrenching
> to note that, on this strange sculpture with eternal letters of air,
> only the figures of 1,910 dead and 14,700 wounded seem ephemeral,
> written as they are in white chalk over a smeared chalk background,
> evidence of numerous erasures.)
>
> This is, at the moment, Ground Zero for the singular movement of
> Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad
> on April 4, 2004, only a few days after arriving in Iraq. Her
> movement began in the shadows and on the Internet, but burst out of a
> roadside ditch in Crawford, Texas, and, right now, actually seems
> capable of changing the political map of America. When I arrive,
> Sheehan is a distant figure, walking with a crew from Good Morning
> America amid the white crosses. I'm told by Jodie, a stalwart of Code
> Pink, the women's antiwar group, in a flamboyant pink-feathered hat,
> just to hang in there along with Joan Baez, assorted parents of
> soldiers, vets, admirers, tourists, press people, and who knows who
> else.
>
> As Sheehan approaches, she's mobbed. She hugs some of her greeters,
> poses for photos with others, listens briefly while people tell her
> they came all the way from California or Colorado just to see her,
> and accepts the literal T-shirt off the back of a man, possibly a
> vet, with a bandana around his forehead, who wants to give her "the
> shirt off my back." She is brief and utterly patient. She offers a
> word to everyone and anyone. At one point, a man shoves a camera in
> my hand so that he and his family can have proof of this moment -- as
> if Cindy Sheehan were already some kind of national monument, which
> in a way she is.
>
> But, of course, she's also one human being, even if she's on what the
> psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton would call a "survivor mission" for
> her son. Exhaustion visibly inhabits her face. (Later, she'll say to
> me, "Most people, if they came with me for a day, would be in a coma
> by eleven A.M.") She wears a tie-dyed, purple T-shirt with "Veterans
> for Peace" on the front and "waging peace" on the back. Her size
> surprises me. She's imposing, far taller than I expected, taller
> certainly than my modest five-foot, six inches. Perhaps I'm startled
> only because I'd filed her away -- despite every strong commentary
> I'd read by her ? as a grieving mother and so, somehow, a diminished
> creature.
>
> And then, suddenly, a few minutes after five, Jodie is hustling me
> into the backseat of a car with Cindy Sheehan beside me, and Joan
> Baez beside her. Cindy's sister Dede, who wears an "Anything war can
> do, peace can do better" T-shirt and says to me later, "I'm the
> behind-the-scenes one, I'm the quiet one," climbs into the front
> seat. As soon as the car leaves the curb, Cindy turns to me: "We
> better get started."
>
> "Now?" I ask, flustered at the thought of interviewing her under such
> chaotic conditions. She offers a tired nod -- I'm surely the 900th
> person of this day -- and says, "It's the only way it'll happen." And
> so, with my notebook (tiny printed questions scattered across several
> pages) on my knees, clutching my two cheap tape recorders for dear
> life and shoving them towards her, we begin:
>
> Tomdispatch: You've said that the failed bookends of George Bush's
> presidency are Iraq and Katrina. And here we are with parts of New
> Orleans flooded again. Where exactly do you see us today?
>
> Cindy Sheehan: Well, the invasion of Iraq was a serious mistake, and
> the invasion and occupation have been seriously mismanaged. The
> troops don't have what they need. The money's being dropped into the
> pockets of war profiteers and not getting to our soldiers. It's a
> political war. Not only should we not be there, it's making our
> country very vulnerable. It's creating enemies for our children's
> children. Killing innocent Arabic Muslims, who had no animosity
> towards the United States and meant us no harm, is only creating more
> problems for us.
>
> Katrina was a natural disaster that nobody could help, but the man-
> made disaster afterwards was just horrible. I mean, number one, all
> our resources are in Iraq. Number two, what little resources we did
> have were deployed far too late. George Bush was golfing and eating
> birthday cake with John McCain while people were hanging off their
> houses praying to be rescued. He's so disconnected from this country -
> - and from reality. I heard a line yesterday that I thought was
> perfect. This man said he thinks Katrina will be Bush's Monica. Only
> worse.
>
> TD: It seems logical that the families of dead soldiers should lead
> an antiwar movement, but historically it's almost unique. I wondered
> if you had given some thought to why it happened here and now.
>
> CS: That's like people asking me, "Why didn't anybody ever think of
> going to George Bush's ranch to protest anything?"
>
> TD: I was going to ask you that too?
>
> CS: [Laughs.] I don't know. I just thought of it and went down to do
> it. It was so serendipitous. I was supposed to go to England for a
> week in August to do Downing Street [Memo] events with [Congressman]
> John Conyers. That got cancelled. I was supposed to go to Arkansas
> for a four-day convention. That got cancelled. So I had my whole
> month free. I was going to be in Dallas for the Veteran's for Peace
> convention. The last straw was on Wednesday, August 3 -- the fourteen
> Marines who were killed and George Bush saying that all of our
> soldiers had died for a noble cause and we had to honor the
> sacrifices of the fallen by continuing the mission. I had just had
> it. That was enough and I had this idea to go to Crawford.
>
> The first day we were there -- this is how unplanned it was -- we
> were sitting in lawn chairs, about six of us, underneath the stars
> with one flashlight between us, and we were going to the bathroom in
> a ten-gallon bucket.
>
> DeDe: Five-gallon?
>
> CS: A Five-gallon bucket, sorry. So that's how well planned this
> action was. We just planned it as we were going along and, for
> something so spontaneous, it turned out to be incredibly powerful and
> successful. It's hard for some people to believe how spontaneous it
> was.
>
> TD: You've written that George Bush refusing to meet with you was the
> spark that lit the prairie fire -- and that his not doing so
> reflected his cowardice. You also said that if he had met you that
> fatal? fateful day?
>
> Joan Baez: Fatal day?
>
> TD: Fatal -- it was fatal for him -- things might have turned out
> quite differently.
>
> CS: If he had met with me, I know he would have lied to me. I would
> have called him on his lies and it wouldn't have been a good meeting,
> but I would have left Crawford. I would have written about it,
> probably done a few interviews, but it wouldn't have sparked this
> exciting, organic, huge peace movement. So he really did the peace
> movement a favor by not meeting with me.
>
> TD: I thought his fatal blunder was to send out [National Security
> Advisor Stephen] Hadley and [Deputy White House Chief of Staff Joe]
> Hagin as if you were the prime minister of Poland. [She laughs.] And
> it suddenly made you in terms of the media?
>
> CS: ?credible.
>
> TD: So what did Hadley and Hagen say to you?
>
> CS: They said, "What do you want to tell the President?" I said, "I
> want to ask the President, what is the noble cause my son died for?"
> And they kept telling me: Keep America safe from terrorism for
> freedom and democracy. Blah-blah-blah? all the excuses I wasn't going
> to take, except from the President. Then we talked about weapons of
> mass destruction and the lack thereof, about how they had really
> believed it. I was: Well, really, Mr. Stephen (Yellowcake Uranium)
> Hadley? I finally said, "This is a waste of time. I might be a
> grieving mother, but I'm not stupid. I'm very well informed and I
> want to meet with the President." And so they said, "Okay, we'll pass
> on your concerns to the President."
>
> They said at one point, "We didn't come out here thinking we'd change
> your mind on policy." And I said, "Yes you did." They thought they
> were going to intimidate me, that they were going to impress me with
> the high level of administration official they had sent out, and
> after they explained everything to me, I was going to go [her voice
> becomes liltingly mocking], "Ohhhh, I really never saw it that way.
> Okay, let's go guys." You know, that's exactly what they thought they
> were going to do to me. And I believe it was a move that did backfire
> because, as you said, it gave me credibility and then, all of a
> sudden, the White House press corps thought this might be a story
> worth covering.
>
> TD: What was that like? I had been reading your stuff on the Internet
> for over a year, but?
>
> CS: I think in progressive circles I was very well known. But all of
> a sudden I was known all over the world. My daughters were in Europe
> when my mother had her stroke. My husband and I decided not to tell
> the girls. We didn't want to ruin their vacation, but they saw it on
> TV. So it really just spread like wildfire. And not only did it bring
> wanted attention, it brought unwanted attention from the right-wing
> media. But that didn't affect me, that didn't harm me at all.
>
> I'd been doing this a long time. I'd been on Wolf Blitzer, Chris
> Mathews, all those shows. I'd done press conferences. It was just the
> intensity that spiked up. But my message has always remained the
> same. I didn't just fall off some pumpkin truck on August 6th and
> start doing this. The media couldn't believe someone like me could be
> so articulate and intelligent and have my own message. Number one,
> I'm a woman; number two, I'm a grieving mother; so they had the urge
> to marginalize me, to pretend like somebody's pulling my strings. Our
> President's not even articulate and intelligent. Someone must be
> pulling his strings, so someone must be pulling Cindy Sheehan's too.
> That offended me. Oh my gosh, you think someone has to put words into
> my mouth! [She laughs.] Do some research!
>
> TD: Did you feel they were presenting you without some of your
> bluntness?
>
> CS: God forbid anybody speak bluntly or tell the truth. Teresa Heinz
> Kerry, they marginalized her too because she always spoke her mind.
>
> TD: Would you like to speak about your bluntness a little because
> words you use like "war crimes" aren't ones Americans hear often.
>
> CS: All you have to do is look at the Nuremberg Tribunal or the
> Geneva Conventions. Clearly they've committed war crimes. Clearly.
> It's black and white. It's not me coming up with this abstract idea.
> It's like, well, did you put a bullet in that person's head or didn't
> you? "Yes I did." Well, that's a crime. It's not shades of grey. They
> broke every treaty. They broke our own Constitution. They broke
> Nuremberg. They broke the Geneva Conventions. Everything. And if
> somebody doesn't say it, does it mean it didn't happen? Somebody has
> to say it, and I'll say it. I've called George Bush a terrorist. He
> says a terrorist is somebody who kills innocent people. That's his
> own definition. So, by George Bush's own definition, he is a
> terrorist, because there are almost 100,000 innocent Iraqis that have
> been killed. And innocent Afghanis that have been killed.
>
> And I think a lot of the mainstream opposition is glad I'm saying it,
> because they don't have to say it. They're not strong enough or brave
> enough or they think they have something politically at stake. We've
> had Congress members talk about impeachment and war crimes. I've
> heard them. But they're the usual suspects. They're marginalized too.
> They've always been against the war, so we can't listen to them.
>
> You know, I had always admired people like the woman who started
> Mothers Against Drunk Driving or John Walsh for starting the Adam
> Walsh Foundation after his son was killed. I thought I could never do
> anything like that to elevate my suffering or my tragedy, and then,
> when it happened to me, I found out I did have the strength.
>
> [It's about 5:30 when we pull up at a Hyatt Hotel. Cindy, Dede, and I
> proceed to the deserted recesses of the hotel's restaurant where
> Cindy has her first modest meal of the day. The rest of the interview
> takes place between spoonfuls of soup.]
>
> TD: I've read a lot of articles about you in which your son Casey is
> identified as an altar boy or an Eagle Scout, but would you be
> willing to tell me a little more about him?
>
> CS: He was very calm. He never got mad. He never got too wild. One
> way or the other, he didn't waver much. I have another son and two
> daughters. He was the oldest one and they just idolized him. He never
> gave anybody trouble, but he was a procrastinator, the kind of person
> who, if he had a big project at school, would wait until the day
> before to do it. But when he had a job -- he worked full time before
> he went into the Army and he was never late for work or missed a day
> in two years. I think that's pretty amazing. The reason we talk about
> him being an altar boy was that church was his number one priority,
> even when he was away from us in the Army. He helped at the chapel.
> He never missed Mass. He was an usher. He was a Eucharistic minister.
> When he was at home, he was heavily involved in my youth ministry.
>
> For eight years I was a youth minister at our parish and for three of
> those years in high school he was in my youth group; then for three
> of those years in college he helped me.
>
> TD: Tell me about his decision to join the Army.
>
> CS: A recruiter got hold of him, probably at a vulnerable point in
> his life, promised him a lot of things, and didn't fulfill one of the
> promises. It was May of 2000. There was no 9/11. George Bush hadn't
> even happened. When George Bush became his commander-and-chief, my
> son's doom was sealed. George Bush wanted to invade Iraq before he
> was even elected president. While he was still governor of Texas he
> was talking about: "If I was commander-and-chief, this is what I
> would do."
>
> Back then, my son was promised a twenty thousand dollar signing
> bonus. He only got four thousand dollars of that when he finished his
> advanced training. He was promised a laptop, so he could take classes
> from wherever he was deployed in the world. He never got that. They
> promised him he could finish college because he only had one year
> left when he went in the Army. They would never let him take a class.
> They promised him he could be a chaplain's assistant which was what
> he really wanted to do; but, when he got to boot camp, they said that
> was full and he could be a Humvee mechanic or a cook. So he chose
> Humvee mechanic. The most awful thing the recruiter promised him was:
> Even if there was a war, he wouldn't see combat because he scored so
> high on the ASVAB [Career Exploration] tests. He would only be in war
> in a support role. He was in Iraq for five days before he was killed
> in combat.
>
> TD: Did you discuss Iraq with him at all?
>
> CS: Yes we did. He didn't agree with it. Nobody in our family agreed
> with it. He said, "I wish I didn't have to go, Mom, but I have to.
> It's my duty and my buddies are going." I believe we as Americans
> have every right to, and should be willing to, defend our country if
> we're in danger. But Iraq had nothing to do with keeping America
> safe. So that's why we disagreed with it. He reenlisted after the
> invasion of Iraq, because he was told if he didn't, he'd have to go
> to Iraq anyway -- he'd be stop-lossed -- but if he did, he'd get to
> choose a new MOS [military specialty] when he got home.
>
> TD: Can you tell me something about your own political background?
>
> CS: I've always been a pretty liberal democrat, but I don't think
> this issue is partisan. I think it's life and death. Nobody asked
> Casey what political party he belonged to before they sent him to die
> in an unjust and immoral war.
>
> TD: You met with Hillary Clinton yesterday, didn't you? What do you
> think generally of the Democratic... well, whatever it is?
>
> CS: They've been very weak. I think Kerry lost because he didn't come
> out strong against the war. He came out to be even more of a
> nightmare than George Bush. You know, we'll put more troops in; I'll
> hunt down terrorists; I'll kill them! That wasn't the right thing to
> say. The right thing to say was: This war was wrong; George Bush lied
> to us; people are dead because of it; they shouldn't be dead; and if
> I'm elected, I'll do everything to get our troops home as soon as
> possible. Then, instead of seeing the failure Kerry was with his
> middle-of-the-road, wishy-washy, cowardly policies, the rest of the
> Democrats have just kept saying the same things.
>
> Howard Dean came out and said he hopes that the President is
> successful in Iraq. What's that mean? How can somebody be successful
> when we have no goals or defined mission or objectives to achieve
> there? They've been very cowardly and spineless. What we did at Camp
> Casey was give them some spine. The doors are open to them, Democrats
> and Republicans alike. As [former Congressman and Win Without War
> Director] Tom Andrews said, if they won't see the light, they'll feel
> the heat. And I think they're feeling the heat.
>
> I can see it happening. I can see some Republicans like Chuck Hagel
> and Walter Jones breaking ranks with the party line. We met with a
> Republican yesterday -- I don't want to say his name because I don't
> want to scare him off -- but he seems to be somebody we can work
> with. Of course, as it gets closer to the congressional elections,
> we'll be letting his constituents know that he can be worked with.
>
> TD: So you're planning to go into the elections as a force?
>
> CS: It's totally about the war, about their position on the war. If
> people care about that issue, then that's what they should make it
> about too. We're starting a "Meet with the Moms" campaign. We're
> going to target every single congressman and senator to show their
> constituents exactly where they stand on the war. People in the state
> of New York, for instance, should look at their senators and say, if
> you don't come out for bringing our troops home as soon as possible,
> we're not going to reelect you.
>
> TD: Did Hillary give you any satisfaction at all?
>
> CS: Her position is still to send in more troops and honor the
> sacrifices of the fallen, which sounds like a Bush position, but the
> dialogue was open.
>
> TD: Don't you think it's strange, these politicians like [Senator]
> Joe Biden, for example, who talk about sending in more troops, even
> though we all know there are no more troops?
>
> CS: Yes... Where you gettin' ?em? Where you gettin' ?em? It's crazy.
> I mean we're going to send more troops in there and leave our country
> even more vulnerable? Leave us open for attack somewhere else, or to
> be attacked by natural and man-made disasters again?
>
> TD: You want the troops out now. Bush isn't about to do that, but
> have you thought about how you would proceed if you could?
>
> CS: When we say now, we don't mean that they can all come home
> tomorrow. I hope everybody knows that. We have to start by
> withdrawing our troops from the cities, bringing them to the borders
> and getting them out. We have to replace our military with something
> that looks Arabic, something that looks Iraqi, to rebuild their
> country. You know, they have the technology, they have the skills,
> but they don't have any jobs right now. How desperate for a job does
> one have to be to stand in line to apply to the Iraqi National Guard?
> I mean, they're killed just standing in line! Give the Iraqis as much
> help and support as they need to rebuild their country which is in
> chaos. When our military presence leaves, a lot of the violence and
> insurgency will die. There will be some regional struggles with the
> different communities in Iraq, but that's happening right now. The
> British put together a country that should never have been put
> together. Maybe it should be split into three different countries --
> who knows? But that's up to them, not us.
>
> TD: And what do you actually expect? We have three and a half more
> years of this administration?
>
> CS: No we don't! [She chuckles.] I think Katrina's going to be his
> Monica. It's not a matter of "if" any more, it's a matter of "when,"
> because clearly? clearly, they're criminals. I mean, look at the
> people who got the first no-bid contracts to clean-up and rebuild New
> Orleans. It's Halliburton again. It's crazy. One negative effect of
> Camp Casey was it took a lot of heat off Karl Rove for his hand in
> the [Valerie] Plame case. But I hear indictments are coming down
> soon. So that's one way it's going to come about. George Bush is
> getting ready to implode. I mean have you seen him lately? He's a man
> who's out of control.
>
> [Note: For those who would like to read Cindy Sheehan in her own
> words, or more about her, check out her archive at LewRockwell.com,
> or go to the Truthout website which has been carrying her latest
> statements and has extensive coverage on her, or visit
> Afterdowningstreet.com which offers thorough, up-to-date coverage of
> her activities and much else.]
>
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