Can We Impeach Now?

I was a guest today on Bree Walker's radio show. She's the progressive radio host from San Diego who purchased Cindy Sheehan's land from her in Crawford, Texas.

Bree attended an event on Friday in San Diego at which Congressman Conyers spoke about impeachment. Her report was extremely interesting. I had already heard reports that Conyers had said: "What are we waiting for? Let's take these two guys out!" But, of course, what we're waiting for is John Conyers. Is he ready to act? It was hard to tell from that comment. In January, Conyers spoke at a huge rally on the National Mall and declared "We can fire them!" but later explained that what he meant was that we could wait for two years and Bush and Cheney's terms would end. Was this week's remark just more empty rhetoric?

It appears to be more than that. Bree Walker told me, on the air, that Conyers said that all he needs is three more Congress Members backing impeachment, and he'll move on it, even without Pelosi. I asked whether that meant specifically moving from 14 cosponsors of H Res 333 to 17, or adding 3 to the larger number of Congress Members who have spoken favorably of impeachment but not all signed onto bills. Bree said she didn't know and that Conyers had declined to take any questions.

  Democratic Underground

Hot air? Who knows?

Joe Cannon says it's not Nancy Pelosi's place to start impeachment proceedings, due to the fact that she is third in line for the presidency. I see his point. She would certainly be accused of trying to get to the top herself. But Conyers could do it without that particular backlash problem.

You know me. I'm the ultimate pessimist about our situation - hell, about humanity in general - but I thought I'd pass on the information in case you are inclined to contact your congressperson.

Or maybe you want to join Cindy Sheehan.

On July 23rd, we will be in Congressman John Conyers’ office to encourage him to take the lead on impeachment. A sit-in in his office is possible and likely.

  Bree Walker

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Throwing in the Towel

Cindy Sheehan. Disillusioned.

....but hey, dis-illusion-ment is a good thing.

Rove greets the war promoters

Driving his own pickup, with two trucks blockading both sides of the street, Bush Administration Senior Political Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove made a surprise sunset visit/photo-op Tuesday night to the half dozen or so Bush supporters camped across the street from "Camp Casey" in Crawford [...]

[...]

The BRAD BLOG has obtained exclusive photographs from Rove's quick glad-handing and back-patting with the few pro-war, pro-Bush stalwarts who were manning a counter-protest site across the street from Sheehan's original camp.

Rove did not meet with any of the dozens of Iraq and Afghan war vets, nor the Gold Star Family members who'd lost loved ones in those wars who were present in Crawford to support Sheehan's request to meet with Bush for an explanation of the "noble cause" that he's suggested their loved ones had died for.

  Brad Blog article

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Edwards family supports Cindy Sheehan

Throughout his campaign for president and then vice president in 2004, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina made it clear that the death of his teenage son in a car accident was off-limits, not for discussion in a political context.

[...]

And, in a departure from a campaign-trail silence that the Edwardses kept about the death of their 16-year-old son, Wade, Elizabeth Edwards noted that Sheehan's son, Casey, 24, died in Iraq eight years to the day after her own son.

For John Edwards, who voted as a senator to support the invasion of Iraq, his wife's outreach to subscribers of their One America Committee Web site bears a distinct anti-war voice that could augur a new tack for Edwards as he prepares for a potential run for president in 2008.

   article

Sounds like cashing in on a possible political windfall to me. Pretty disgusting in my opinion.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

The Great Uniter

Maybe if we stay the course, Iraq won't be the only country embroiled in civil war.

SALT LAKE CITY -- A Utah television station has rejected an antiwar advertisement featuring the California mother whose son's death in Iraq prompted her August vigil outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch, deeming it "inappropriate" for the local market.

In the ad, Cindy Sheehan pleads with Bush for a meeting and accuses him of lying to the American people about Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction and about that country's connection to al-Qaida.

[...]

A national sales representative for KTVX, the local ABC affiliate, rejected the 60-second spot in an e-mail to media buyers, calling it an "inappropriate commercial advertisement for Salt Lake City."

  Edmonton Sun article

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Salt Lake City's Mayor Rocky Anderson used e-mail this week to call for "the biggest demonstration this state has ever seen," when President Bush appears before a national veterans convention Monday.

Anderson says Bush policies are disastrous for the country and that to stay quiet during the president's visit would be send a message of apathy.

The mayor's e-mail called for a collaboration of health care advocates, seniors, gay and lesbian advocates, anti-Patriot advocates, civil libertarians and anti-war folks to protest outside the convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

  KPVI article

[A] patriotic camp with a "God Bless Our President!" banner sprung up in downtown Crawford, Texas Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by Sheehan. The camp is named "Fort Qualls," in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, 20, who died in Iraq last fall.

   article

Because being anti-war is unpatriotic, remember.


"The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor........Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul." -- Mark Twain

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Sheehan update

The mother of a slain soldier who has camped outside President Bush's ranch for nearly two weeks to protest the war in Iraq left Thursday to tend to her ill mother.

Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq in April last year, said her 74-year-old mother suffered a stroke. Sheehan said she and her sister were going to Los Angeles "to assess the situation" but that her supporters will continue her protest outside Bush's Texas home.

[...]

Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska and Vietnam war veteran who has been critical of Bush's handling of the war, said Thursday that Sheehan "deserves some consideration, and I think that should have been done right from the beginning."

"I think the wise course of action, the compassionate course of action, the better course of action would have been to immediately invite her in to the ranch," Hagel told CNN.

"It should have been done when this whole thing started. Listen to her."

  CNN article

The wise, compassionate, better course is not a favored one of Mr. Bush. I'm not sure we have any examples of it.

Vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan

Columbia, Missouri.

Small, but present.


Complete with warmongers. They've gotten organized now that the anti-war crowd is growing.

Aside from the inane "Remember 9/11", the second girl's sign reads, "50,000 terrorists dead or captured. We are winning!"

Alas, some people just don't get it. Perhaps they never will.

Thanks to Marlon and Kelley for organizing the vigil, and to Marlon for reciting Gil Scott-Heron's "Work for Peace"...

The Military and the Monetary.
Get together whenever they think its necessary,
they've turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
they are turning the planet into a cemetery.

From the talented TJ at POAC
who could use some help getting to Crawford

AP photos from other vigils: Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Portland, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Omaha, Jackson (MS)

My Fellow Americans

Conservative knucklehead and radio host Mike Gallagher gathered a group of like-minded troglodytes and headed over to the Bush compound in Crawford to harass Cindy Sheehan and her group last night.

As the "Camp Casey" protesters sang America The Beautiful or stood quietly, the right-wing group chanted "we don't care," presumably thinking they were screaming at the mother who lost her son, Casey, to Bush's war in Iraq. Mercifully, Ms. Sheehan happened to be taking a rare break at Crawford Peace House when Gallagher's crew showed up.

  Yellow Dog Blog post

Here in the Third World.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Camp Casey moves closer to Compound W

Camp Casey, Sheehan's increasingly crowded roadside encampment named after her son, will move soon to a large property even closer to the president's ranch, she said.

"A kind gentleman from down the road offered us the use of his property," Sheehan told reporters Tuesday night. She identified the man as Fred Mattlage, whom she described as a distant cousin of Larry Mattlage, a local resident who fired a shotgun across the road from the encampment on Sunday afternoon.

Sheehan said the property, near a Secret Service checkpoint close to Bush's ranch, would have plenty of space for the parked cars that have jammed the roadside, irritating local residents.

Fred Mattlage, an Army veteran, said that he sympathizes with the demonstrators and that the group will be safer on his corner 1-acre lot.

"I just think people should have a right to protest without being harassed," Mattlage said. "And I'm against the war. I don't think it's a war we need to be in."

Demonstrators said they would start moving their tents, anti-war banners and portable toilets to the new site today and hope to have the new camp set up in time for a dusk candlelight vigil.

The vigil will be one of about 1,000 held tonight across the country, an effort organized by liberal advocacy groups MoveOn.org Political Action, TrueMajority and Democracy for America.

  SFGate article

Vigils for Cindy Sheehan
7:30 PM :: Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Sheehan update

[A] neighboring rancher, who is a veteran, has offered them some of his nearby land if they have to move from the roadside.

[...]

The spirit of that rancher standing up in his own pro-Bush community is the sort of public support for Cindy Sheehan and her cause that is growing across America. Tomorrow's vigils for Cindy Sheehan will be the most visible measure of the size and strength of public concern about the war in a long time. It is critical to have as many vigils as possible and as many attendees as possible to demonstrate the wave of public support for Cindy.

[...]

Vigils for Cindy Sheehan
7:30 PM :: Wednesday, August 17, 2005

The shooting neighbor - 2002

"I BET OL' GEORGE HATES all this nonsense," said his neighbor, Larry Mattlage, on my last day in Crawford. Larry has never met the president, but his proximity to George W. Bush means that he thinks about the man a great deal. As we talked, Larry leaned on a cedar fence post, squinting in the noonday sun, and pointed out landmarks on the Bush ranch, three quarters of a mile away. On the northernmost side of the ranch ran the Middle Bosque River: a stream of gin-clear water that threaded its way through the prairie grass, past thick stands of cedar elm and burr oak. Farther west was the original ranch house—just a gray blur through Larry's binoculars—and a fleet of Secret Service vehicles. Out of sight behind a rocky ridgeline lay the scenery that makes this western corner of McLennan County so starkly beautiful: the box canyons, limestone bluffs, caves, and slow-moving creeks that dot the ranch's two and a half square miles. "I bet George Bush would love to just get in his pickup and drive around his land and clear his mind," Larry said. "He can't ever be by himself, and that's a terrible burden for anyone to bear. A man needs a little freedom."

[...]

Staring out toward the Bush ranch, Larry explained that before Bush bought the ranch it had been a hog farm. Nowadays, Larry finds himself feeling nostalgic for the time when the hogs made the air more pungent. "Sometimes I wish I could still smell those hogs and hear them squealing instead of listening to all those F-16s," Larry said, breaking into a grin. "Don't get me wrong; the Bushes are fine folks. It's not about George Bush. It's about what comes with him." Larry ticked off a long list of grievances: Secret Service roadblocks on Prairie Chapel Road where he was asked to show identification, property taxes that have become so high that he worries he will have no legacy to pass on to his sons. He and his neighbors are concerned about a proposed new road, to be constructed so that the presidential motorcade will not have to slow down for curves; if built, it would bisect Larry's ranch and several other ranches. Most of all, he is angry that Secret Service agents speed past him each day without having the common courtesy to wave. "Country people drive slow," he said. "We're used to pulling over to the side of the road and visiting. But if you wave at the Secret Service, they think, 'What's his problem?' It used to be you knew everybody when you drove by. Now everyone's a stranger."

Larry wanted to give me a tour of his ranch, so we talked in his pickup, lurching down rutted dirt roads. "No one used to talk about politics around here," he said, steering past Black Angus cattle that lay napping in the shade. "Family feuds have started over all this. You used to be just a neighbor. Now you're a Republican neighbor or a Democratic neighbor. It's taken away the closeness of the community." He pondered this for a moment as he drove, and sighed. "I'll make some people mad for saying this, but I'll tell you what really ticks me off. Bush portrays this as his hometown, and it ain't. He just barreled in here."

  Texas Monthly article

I don't think "Ol' George" hates all the nonsense. I think he craves it. Drive around and clear his mind? No. Little Georgie needs attention.

Casa Fabricata: built 1999, just in time to elect a New Haven, Connecticutt good old country boy to the presidency.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Remember the neighbor who fired the shots near Sheehan's camp? Here's a litte more of what he said on Sunday...

And I will be back here all night long and I’ll be shootin’ at doves in the air, so anybody that camps here better get ready for some gunfire. If we don’t hit anything, I want every redneck in Texas to come on my property and this property here and we gonna’ really have a show.

Invitation to disaster.

[Sheehan's] campsite has close to a thousand white crosses, each representing GIs who, like Sheehan's son Casey, were killed in Iraq.

[...]

Monday night, a pickup truck tore through the rows of white crosses.

The crosses stretched along the road at the Crawford, Texas, camp, bore the names of fallen U.S. soldiers. No one was hurt.

  CBS article

Update 3:00 pm: Maru comments:

In a stunning show of support for the troops, a redneck in a pickup truck mows down crosses bearing the names of soldiers killed in Iraq.

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.

[...]

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."

[...]

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?

Cindy, Don and George

I'm just going to link you to this excellent piece by Tom Englehardt. It's a little bit long, but I think you will find it easily holds your interest. I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Go Cindy

Cindy Sheehan vaulted into national consciousness this month on the power of her story as the grieving mother of a fallen soldier.

But what began as a solitary campaign to force a meeting with President Bush by setting up camp along the road to his ranch has quickly taken on the full trappings of a political campaign. Sheehan is working with a political consultant and a team of public relations professionals, and now she is featured in a television ad.

[...]

Sheehan has courted coverage from the traveling White House press corps with a news conference. A schedule of when relatives of other military casualties in Iraq are expected to join Sheehan in Crawford was distributed to reporters. Her team coordinated an antiwar rally attended by hundreds in Crawford yesterday.

  Boston.com article

Karl Rove must be slipping. If only Buttie had met with the woman like she asked, none of this would have happened.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update 9:00 am: It spreads.

DECATUR -- Her voice suddenly steadying, Mary Ann MacCombie took a very public stand Thursday against the war in Iraq that cost her son his life.

Surrounded by TV cameras and reporters, MacCombie blasted the U.S. involvement in Iraq in honor of her son, Sgt. Ryan Campbell, who was killed in April 2004 in a car bombing in south Iraq.

"It's too late for my son, but not for his best friend and thousands of other soldiers," said MacCombie, who was part of a procession of mothers that protested the war outside a veteran's hospital.

"It is time to answer the call and say no more pain, no more false leadership and no more war," said Patricia Roberts, whose son, Spc. Jamaal Rashard Addison, was killed in Iraq in March 2003.

Many in the crowd of 50 or so supporters held aloft signs proclaiming "I stand with Cindy Sheehan," the grieving mother camped outside President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch whose 24-year-old son was killed last year in Sadr City.

  WSBTV article

Update 11:00 am: Soundbitten has an explanation.

When Hollywood celebrities stopped protesting the war so emphatically, the neocons lost one of their greatest assets for promoting our adventures in Iraq. Cindy Sheehan is no Dixie Chicks, alas, but at least she's a start. The more followers her vigil attracts, the bigger the backlash: One photo of Sean Penn standing in solidarity with Sheehan would do more to burnish the president's image amongst his supporters than a hundred photos of him beating up cedar trees, or dodging enemy gravel on his Trek Fuel 98, or communing with his favorite pile of real American rocks. And, thus, it's unlikely Sheehan will be getting her audience with the president any time soon. While America's Cowboy-in-Chief may be congenitally indisposed toward horses, he loves to ride scapegoats as far as they can take him.

I guess they rethought that arrest thing

Cindy Sheehan is still on the street. Buttie still hasn't met with her, though.

Speaking of Cindy Sheehan

Dear Mr. President:

We write to respectfully urge you to meet with Cindy Sheehan and other relatives of fallen soldiers who request a meeting to discuss their deep concerns about the war in Iraq. We also request that you help ensure that Ms. Sheehan and her colleagues are not arrested as long as they continue to wait for a meeting with you at their location in the peaceable and legal manner that they have maintained thus far.

The rest of the letter is at Raw Story. It's signed by 16 House Democrats.

Yes, John Conyers leads the list.

Cindy Sheehan to be arrested

An email from Jack Dalton:

The following breaking news that Cindy Sheehan, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, is going to be arrested this Thursday as a “threat to national security” only confirms what so many of us already know—democracy, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to redress our government, freedom to dissent, freedom to demand answers from so-called elected officials is dead in this nation.

To call Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan who was killed in Iraq, and whose blood is on Bush/Cheney’s hands, a “threat to national security” because she demands to know from Bush why her son died shows how low this nation has been dragged.

We must give our full support to Cindy while she takes on the beast—Bush/Cheney & Co., Inc. The link to “meetwithcindy.org” I have not as yet been able to open past “page not found.” Why does that not surprise me?—Jack

Cindy Sheehan to Be Arrested Thursday
by David Swanson
Mon Aug 8th, 2005 at 10:55:39 PDT
(From the diaries -- kos)

Cindy Sheehan phoned me from Texas a few minutes ago to say that she's been informed that beginning Thursday, she and her companions will be considered a threat to national security and will be arrested.

Coincidentally, Thursday is the day that Rice and Rumsfeld visit the ranch, and Friday is a fundraiser event for the haves and the have mores. Cindy said that she and others plan to be arrested. http://www.meetwithcindy.org

Oh, no. Nothing like fascism. Not even a hint of Stalin or Hitler.

Update : From the Meet With Cindy website

Come to Crawford

We need your support. There is power in numbers. Join us in Crawford now!

Crawford Peace House
Directions to get here.

Help Others

If you can't come to Crawford, please contribute to a fund to cover the costs of assisting others with their travel and their stay in Crawford. For details, contact the Crawford Peace House.


Send Cindy a Note

Send a note or letter to Cindy Sheehan here.

More ways to help at MeetWithCindy.org.

Further note from Jack Dalton:

This is for those of you here in Oregon, specifically the Portland area. VFP-72 is trying to organize a vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan, at Shrunk Plaza this Thursday, the day the feds said they will arrest her if she is not gone.

The mother of a son killed in Iraq, on public land, exercising what are supposed to be her rights to freedom of speech, assembly and the right to demand answer's from those in charge, namely Bush. In Cindy's case, she wants to know why her son died. A very reasonable request.

The response to her question--the Bush squad tags her a "threat to national security" and threatens her with arrest. I grew up being taught what made the Soviet Union and communism so evil was they did not allow free speech, dissent, no questioning of government at all, upon pain of arrest and sometimes death.

As soon as I have the time this will take place here in Portland this Thursday, I will let you know. Let me know if you can be there on Thursday, time uncertain right now, and I'll pass it on the VFP. As for me, I'm willing to do the entire day so the time really makes no difference to me.

In solidarity and peace

Jack

Update 12:30 pm:

Starting today, Gold Star families from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Arkansas and other states whose loved ones have died as a result of the war in Iraq will be joining one of their members, Cindy Sheehan, at the protest.

[...]

Members of Gold Star Families for Peace and Military Families Speak Out who are traveling to Crawford will be available for interview beginning on Tuesday afternoon August 9th.

For More Information:

-- Military Families Speak Out: http://www.mfso.org

-- Gold Star Families for Peace: http://www.gsfp.org

  Raw Story article

Cindy Sheehan addendum

I missed this when I posted earlier - or rather, I hadn't seen it.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in Iraq, recently described a visit to the George W Bush White House in terms that suggest she saw him step right out of his skin. "His mouth kept moving, but there was nothing in his eyes," [...] "His eyes were empty, hollow shells" [... He was] repeatedly addressing the grieving parent [Sheehan] as "Ma" [...] and most disturbing, saying, I can’t even imagine losing a loved one, a mother or a father or a sister or a brother," when he had, at the age of six, lost his beloved three-year old sister Robin to leukemia.

Justin Frank writes in Bush on the Couch:

Robin died in New York in October 1953; her parents spent the next day golfing in Rye, attending a small memorial service the following day before flying back to Texas. George learned of his sister's illness only after her death, when his parents returned to Texas, where the family remained while the child's body was buried in a Connecticut family plot. There was no funeral.

  Rigorous Intuition article

I know I had read about that elsewhen, but had completely forgotten the creepiness.

Yeah, these people are heartless and soulless.

Snatched from Maru's July 6 posts

Mom, Who Lost Son In Iraq, Talks About 'Disgusting' White House Private Meeting With Bush

[...]

[W]hen [Cindy] Sheehan received an invitation to meet privately with President Bush at the White House two months after her son died, the least she could have expected was a bit of compassion or a kind word coming from the heart.

But what she encountered was an arrogant man with eyes lacking the slightest bit of compassion, a President totally "detached from humanity" and a man who didn’t even bother to remember her son’s name when they were first introduced.

Instead of a kind gesture or a warm handshake, Sheehan said she immediately got a taste of Bush arrogance when he entered the room and "in a condescending tone and with a disgusting loud Texas accent," said: "Who we’all honorin’ here today?"

"His mouth kept moving, but there was nothing in his eyes or anything else about him that showed me he really cared or had any real compassion at all. This is a human being totally disconnected from humanity and reality. His eyes were empty, hollow shells and he was acting like I should be proud to just be in his presence when it was my son who died for his illegal war! It was one of the most disgusting experiences I ever had and it took me almost a year to even talk about it," said Sheehan in a telephone conversation from Washington D.C. where she was attending a July 4th anti-war rally.

Sheehan said the June 2004 private meeting with the President went from bad to worse to a nightmare when Bush acted like he didn’t even want to know her name. She said Bush kept referring to her as ‘Ma’ or ‘Mom’ while he "put on a phony act," saying things like ‘Mom, I can’t even imagine losing a loved one, a mother or a father or a sister or a brother.’

"The whole meeting was simply bizarre and disgusting, designed to intimidate instead of providing compassion. He didn’t even know our names," said Sheehan. "Finally I got so upset I just looked him in the eye, saying ‘I think you can imagine losing someone. You have two daughters. Imagine losing them?’ After I said that he just looked at me, looked at me with no feeling or caring in his eyes at all."

   article

Perhaps he was trying simply to recall his daughters.

Sheehan said what really upset her about the meeting is that Bush appeared to become annoyed and even angry at her daughter Carley, 25, who also attended the White House get-together.

"My daughter said to him directly ‘I wish I could bring my loved one back’ and he said something like ‘so do we.’ Later she told me that after he made his remark he gave her one of the filthiest looks she had ever had gotten in her life.

"I just couldn’t believe this was happening. It was so surreal and bizarre. Later I met with some of the other 15or 16 families who were at the White House the same day and, sure enough, they all felt the same way I did.

"It’s interesting that they put us each in separate rooms. I heard this was done to prevent any type of group outburst and since it’s easier to control a situation when people are separated. Looking back, all I can say is that the meeting with Bush was one of the most disgusting experiences in my life."

[...]

[W]e should bring the troops home and quit forcing the Iraqi people to pay for our government's hubris and quit forcing innocent children to suffer so we can allegedly fight terrorism somewhere besides America. How absolutely racist and immoral is it to take America's battles to another land and make an entire country pay for the crimes of others? To me, this is blatant genocide.

Does the name Cindy Sheehan sound familiar?

"Beating a political stake in [Bush's] black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered.

  6/14 post