President Bush - Call Off the dogs on Cindy Sheehan
Raw Story is talking about the article from 2004 which Matt Drudge is employing, with a Right attack-dog-wind beneath his wings [he got the report archive from Freepers]. The mission to attack is on - the objective is to discredit the mother of a fallen Iraqi soldier.
A mother of a dead child pays close attention to the cause for which her boy dies. She looks, with open eyes, for the higher cause - something she can hold in her heart as a solid reason for never seeing her loving son on the face of this earth again.
Cindy Sheehan is horrified by what she is seeing. And she has been told that she will be arrested if she remains in Crawford, begging to see the President and have him look her in the eye, once again - only this time she has the courage that conviction has brought to her. She isn't in shock any longer. She cannot remain silent. Her conscience will not allow her to do so.
Her mourning has turned to questions. It was good of the President to have consoled her in mourning. It is wrong of the President to ignore her very public concerns.
Sheehan says that, during the Republican National Convention, she saw President Bush exploiting the meeting he'd had with her family to "justify what he was doing." She continued, "It's now clear to me that what I had feared is true: Bush lied us into war, and Casey, more than 1,800 other Americans and thousands and thousands of Iraqis are dead because of what he did."
Michelle Malkin says this might be politically-motivated, and to that I would say 'No kidding'. Sheehan said herself, in the quote I just used above, that her perception of the President's political misuse of her son's brave death and the family meeting that followed for re-election purposes - and all that has happened in Iraq since Casey's death - has caused her initial fears to come true. I am especially bothered by Ms. Malkin insinuating that Cindy Sheehan "has lost sight of the fact that her 24-year-old son, Casey, proudly and willingly served." Cindy Sheehan has never led anyone to believe that. I am disappointed to see Michelle being little more than an echo chamber for Matt Drudge. As a highly visible Conservative blogger, I expect more intellectual and emotional honesty from her. Michelle also imagines she has a telepathic connection to the fallen soldier when she speaks for him:
I can't imagine Army Spc. Casey Sheehan would stand for a bunch of strangers glomming onto his mother's crusade and using him to undermine the war effort as they shouted "W killed her son" in front of countless TV cameras.How can anyone purport to know what Casey would have thought? How he would have reacted? Casey is dead. He's not coming back to confirm or deny this little chestnut.
Accusing a woman of crocodile tears over the death of a child and concern about the cause for which he died is about as low as it goes. It doesn't get much lower, folks. (Hear that bottom-of- the-barrel scraping sound?)
Support the troops - unless they die and their Moms start asking too many questions about "why."
Taking a fallen soldier's Mama away in handcuffs is not going to do wonders for the President's already ebbing popularity. (Maybe they can stick a Yellow-Ribbon magnet on the handcuffs to make it acceptable to the extremists of the Right who think the president can do no wrong).
To President Bush, I would say: I'm a mom. My own boy just saw you last week at Fort A.P. Hill. I've raised him to respect the office of the President and to be a responsible American citizen. He's a good boy. Casey Sheehan was a good boy, too. There's millions and millions of moms out here in America. Our children are our treasure. We're watching you, President George W. Bush. You say you are a man of compassion. Do the right thing - denounce Sheehan's ugly rightwing attack-squad and give her the meeting she desires. Look her in the eye - talk to her. We'll think a lot more of you for having done so. Thank you.
Crossposted at Blogcritics
UPDATE: Cindy Sheehan can be heard responding to Michelle Malkin's decidedly inappropriate comments about her son, Casey. [Think Progress]