Support Cindy Sheehan: Wednesday vigils

Cindy Sheehan, mother of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan who was killed in Iraq, continues her vigil outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. She was recently joined by more moms who lost a child in Iraq and other military families. Meanwhile President Bush continues his five-week vacation and pledged Thursday to keep U.S. troops in Iraq—meaning more moms will lose a child.

Cindy has asked supporters to start candlelight vigils in their communities to support her and call for an end to the war. So, MoveOn is teaming up with True Majority and Democracy for America to host Vigils for Cindy Sheehan on Wednesday, August 17th, to show our solidarity with Cindy.

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This Wednesday, starting at 7:30 PM local time, folks across the country will be holding vigils for Cindy Sheehan (and for all military families and gold star families). Can you host a vigil? If not, you can search to see if there's one to attend in your area at by clicking here.

Sponsored by MoveOn.org

For Columbia, Missouri, area residents, there will be a vigil at the Courthouse on Walnut Street (at 8th), 7:30 pm, Wednesday. Bring a candle.

A decorated U.S. Marine, who had been treated for post-war stress since serving in Iraq, opened fire outside a Massachusetts nightclub, wounding two people, Boston media reported on Monday.

Daniel B. Cotnoir will be arraigned on Monday on charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon and assault with intent to murder after the incident early on Saturday in the city of Lawrence, The Boston Globe said.

  Yahoo News article

Update 1:15 pm: One of Crawford's all-American residents fired some shots outside the Sheehan camp.

"We're going to start doing our war and it's going to be underneath the law," he told me. "Whatever it takes. So y'all go find another place to do whatever you do. 'Cause this is our front yard and back yard."

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Interviewed afterward, protest leader Cindy Sheehan said it was okay if the man fired his gun on his own property, so long as the bullets remained on his property as well.

Update 1:45 pm: Billmon comments on the Sheehan phenomenon:

As Harold Myerson put it a couple of months ago:

However perverse this may sound, the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration . . . The administration has no one to demonize. With nobody blocking the troop trains, military recruitment is collapsing of its own accord. With nobody in the streets, the occupation is being judged on its own merits.

Without hordes of angry yippies to distract it, the silent majority -- or at least, the non-GOP majority -- has managed to conclude, correctly, that the war cannot be won.

When it becomes clear on Monday that our squabbling Iraqi clients have missed yet another critical deadline in the political process that's magically supposed to bail us out of the mess Cheneybush has made, the silent majority will have a better idea of just how much lower those expectations could go. And if they see this story, they'll get a hint of what the consequences of failure on such a grand scale could be:

US troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on US and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said yesterday . . . Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from sometime after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Whatever her current political leanings (or her choice of blogging partners) Cindy Sheehan can stake a powerful claim to being a dues-paying member of that same silent majority -- but in her case, without the silence. Which is precisely why she's being swift boated so ferociously by the professional liars on Fox News and their amateur auxiliaries in Right Blogostan.

One angry mom is dangerous enough, especially when the President of the United States insists on being her unofficial publicist. But now there are 300 of them standing in the dirt and the heat down in Crawford -- and millions more watching on TV, silently asking themselves the same questions Sheehan wants to ask Bush: How did we get into this mess? How do we get out? Have our sons and daughters been sent to die in vain?