Slain Soldier's Mom Stages Protest Near Bush's Ranch

[FORD]

Veteran Offers New Campsite to Camp Casey, Closer to Bush Ranch

Camp Casey is moving closer to Bush Ranch…

A veteran and relative of relative of “the man who had fired a shotgun in frustration over the protests” has offered his property to Cindy Sheehan and Camp Casey. The property is closer to Bush’s Crawford ranch.

“A neighbor of President Bush’s has offered us his land,” the source said. “It’s got plenty of acreage for us, it’s private land, we would have legal permission to be on it, it’s much closer to the ranch — in fact it’s across the street from his (Bush’s) church.”

“We have taken him up on his offer,” the source added.

Sheehan was not immediately available for comment.

Sheehan was expected to begin moving as early as Wednesday morning.

This is a small victory for Cindy Sheehan who is in her 10th day of protest outside of Bush’s Crawford Ranch.

According to the source, the land offered to Sheehan is owned by Fred Mattlage, who is a distant cousin of Larry Mattlage, a man who fired a shotgun over the weekend in frustration over the commotion caused by the vigil.

‘I support what you all are doing’
The source said Fred Mattlage made the offer saying “I’m a veteran, I support what you all are doing and I want to offer you my land.”


Thanks, Fred, for your service, and for your stand in solidarity with other veterans and families of the dead. Unlike your gun crazy cousin and that other bozo named Larry, YOU are a real patriot!

[Warham]

BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, August 16, 2005 3:08 p.m. EDT

The Crippled-Vet Ploy

There's plenty of blame to go around for the appalling spectacle of Sheehanoia, but one name that hasn't been mentioned is that of John Kerry. Kerry might have invented, and he certainly pioneered, the tactic being employed by those who are exploiting Cindy Sheehan to further their political agenda. As he explained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971:

"I called the media. . . . I said, 'If I take some crippled veterans down to the White House and we chain ourselves to the gates, will we get coverage?' 'Oh, yes, we will cover that.' "

Do you remember the media spectacle in Crawford, Texas, a year ago? It was precisely the crippled-vet ploy. Kerry sent triple amputee Max Cleland, who had been defeated in his 2002 Senate re-election bid, to deliver a letter to President Bush demanding that the president denounce the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This move was stunning in its audacity, though not its effectiveness: Here was Kerry, staking his campaign on his authority as a Vietnam veteran, appealing to the authority of another Vietnam veteran in an effort to silence Vietnam veterans who opposed him.

The media love this sort of story because of its man-bites-dog nature: Vietnam veteran says fellow vets are war criminals! Sept. 11 widows blame Bush for their husbands' deaths! Gold Star Mother says son died in vain! But isn't the shtick getting a little old by now?

In any case, because of this man-bites-dog quality the stories are ultimately meaningless. John Kerry did not actually speak for Vietnam veterans, most of whom thought their service was honorable. The "Jersey girls" do not actually speak for Sept. 11 widows, most of whom understand that Islamist terrorists, not the president, murdered their husbands. And Cindy Sheehan does not actually speak for Gold Star Mothers, most of whom remember their children as heroes, not dupes; and hardly any of whom agree with Sheehan that "this country is not worth dying for."

Sheehanoia is a sign of the desperation, not the strength, of the left in America. Publicity stunts are no substitute for an actual political program. Joan Walsh writes in Salon:

Even as Sheehan's public relations victories give people reason to be optimistic about the administration's unraveling in Iraq, liberals and war opponents have to be careful not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Rooting for "the administration's unraveling in Iraq"--that is, for America's defeat in the central antiterror battleground--is not what we'd call a political program.

[Warham]

She's like the new Hanoi Jane.

[blueturk]

Originally posted by Warham
She's like the new Hanoi Jane.

That has got to be one of the most moronic bleatings I have ever read. You are serving your wool covered leader well.

"We discussed the way forward in Iraq, discussed the importance of a democracy in the greater Middle East in order to leave behind a peaceful tomorrow." —George W. Bush, Tbilisi, Georgia, May 10, 2005

[Warham]

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

Remember that the Vietnam War (Iraq War) was fought for reasons many Americans considered unworthy, but yet there was Jane Fonda (Cindy Sheehan) out there breaking down American morale, and causing our troops to get into more harm's way over in Southeast Asia (Iraq). When the guys came home, people were spitting on them in airports, calling them babykillers. Many vets felt like their country had turned on them. (might happen, we'll see).

Many vets, including my father, never forgave Fonda for those anti-war comments over the years. She was a traitor.

[Warham]

Cindy Sheehan: Rosa Parks or Jane Fonda?
By Robert Freeman

Is Cindy Sheehan the Rosa Parks or the Jane Fonda of the War in Iraq? Is she the lonely sentinel, standing righteously against injustice? Or a self-centered publicity seeker, endangering American soldiers in the War?

The question is something of a political Rorschach test, telling us more about ourselves and our appraisal of America's wars than about Sheehan. But asking it and understanding the issues behind the question might help us find a solution to the illegitimate and failed War.

Rosa Parks is an iconic figure of twentieth century America because she so tidily embodies one of its greatest ideals: the courageous stand against injustice. When she refused to give up her seat on the bus, she let loose a fire that had simmered since the end of the Civil War. Despite its ideals of equality, American society in the early 1960s was manifestly unequal. Blacks were undeniably second-class citizens, their subjugation systematically abetted by the government itself.

The cultural esteem for Parks' heroism originates with the founding fathers. They, too, had been made second-class citizens by their own government. They were denied representation, protection against unreasonable searches, and trials by jury, rights guaranteed to all Englishmen. They demanded those rights of King George but were rebuffed. Mending those injustices became the inspiration for the American Revolution.

Jane Fonda is a similarly iconic figure but for different and more complex reasons. Her conflicted celebrity, almost 40 years after her act, reflects not one but two models that collide with each other in the American psyche and that make the protest of war so problematic for Americans.

In the hostile rendering, Fonda endangered American soldiers in Vietnam by providing succor to the enemy. "Hanoi Jane" is no more than a latter-day Tokyo Rose, and, in fact, a modern day Benedict Arnold. There is no exculpation for her acts. They were traitorous. And the garden variety war protesters were merely state-side acolytes in the treason, inescapably stained with the same existential guilt.

But the fact that Fonda still enjoys celebrity status with much of the American citizenry suggests, at the very least, another deeply held understanding of her acts. Just as Parks had done, Fonda defied the tyranny of her own government, a government that had abandoned its own ideals and was perpetrating a massive injustice.

Ho Chi Mihn had asked President Truman in 1946 if the U.S. would help the Vietnamese throw off the yoke of French colonial occupation. Sadly, Truman sided with the French, betraying his country's founding ideals of self-determination and freedom from colonial domination. In that act, he irretrievably undermined the U.S. moral position with the Vietnamese people, ultimately dooming the course of the War. Truman's betrayal of American ideals is the origin of our enduring angst about the Vietnam War. But it is not the only source.

While Americans ritualistically mourn the 58,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam, we are oblivious, or worse, indifferent, to the fact that more than three million Vietnamese were killed. That is 50 Vietnamese killed for every American. And this, against a country that had never attacked or even threatened to attack the United States but, rather, had asked it for help.

It is a profound moral blindness to deny the immorality of such a war. Fonda's protests of the War, of the betrayal inherent in its origins and the brutal injustice that saturated its execution, are what sustains the positive side of her reputation today.

The meaningful question now is, does protest against the current War endanger its outcome? In some sense, the answer must be "yes". But that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. The North Vietnamese paid close attention to American sentiment towards their war. Ho Chi Mihn rightly observed, "Eventually, the Americans will tire of their losses and will have to go home." His strategy was one of enervation, of fatiguing America of its will to fight. It worked. A similar dynamic is surely playing out in Iraq today.

As public rejection of the War steadily mounts it becomes increasingly clear that the War will not be won. But that can hardly be the fault of the miniscule number of protesters or the even more minute coverage they have belatedly received in the media. Rather, it is an indictment of the legitimacy of the War itself, of Bush's deceitful campaign to sell it to the American people, and of his catastrophically failed execution of it. In fact, it is an all-too-telling measure of the fragility of the War's support that its backers are so spooked, so threatened, by the simple civil protest of one single woman.

What if the Vietnam protests had not occurred? It was the impending civil war in the U.S. that convinced Johnson's "Wise Men" that the War must be ended. What if the protesters had been silenced, as the right wing thugs want to silence Cindy Sheehan today? What if the War had gone on for another ten years and another 58,000 American and another three million Vietnamese lives had been lost?

In this sense, the protests undoubtedly saved soldiers' lives, in fact, many times more lives than might have been lost as their consequence. They unquestionably helped end a calamitous injustice.

But beyond concerns for body counts lies a more perplexing irony of protest, one that is seemingly lost on those who would condemn Cindy Sheehan as the Hanoi Jane of Iraq. It is precisely through such acts of protest that America itself was born. Those who would muzzle Sheehan would destroy the very freedom to challenge government that they claim to be fighting for, that they claim to be wanting to install into Iraq.

Worse, by silencing protest, they make it impossible to weigh the justice-or to end the injustice-of the War itself. As with Vietnam, Iraq never attacked or even threatened to attack the U.S. As with Vietnam, Iraq's invasion was rationalized by a massive campaign of lies and distortions by the U.S. government. The war has killed almost 2,000 American soldiers and, according to Lancet, the respected British medical journal, over 100,000 Iraqis, mostly women and children. As with Vietnam, that is 50 Iraqis killed for every American.

And as with Vietnam, it is a profound moral blindness that tries to conflate such acts into a just cause. It is equally profound political cowardice that needs to suppress the voice of a single woman who would simply question the justification for such acts. For, as with protest, accountability of the government to its people is one of the elemental bases of America's founding, indeed, of its very existence.

Finally, beyond body counts, beyond the sanctity of protest, beyond the imperative to confront and right injustice, beyond the need for accountability, lies the simple question of how the war can be ended. It was not Cindy Sheehan's but George Bush's Dogpatch demagoguery that declared, "Bring 'em on!"

But his war spawns insurgents far faster than Bush can kill them. It long ago breached the dikes of Iraq itself and has metastasized throughout the rest of the world. It has made America and the world less safe from terrorism, not more so. And there is no end in sight. When the president's latest aim for the War itself-to reduce terror-has been lost, "Stay the course" is not a plausible, not even a remotely sensible strategy.

Yet that is all Bush has to offer the American people. It is not acceptable. A sizable majority of Americans now believe the war is a failure. How can it possibly be a threat to the nation to ask of the man who lied us into it how he plans to get us out? Or is it simply Bush's plan to wait for another 2,000 American soldiers' deaths? And another 2,000? And another 2,000? When will it end? And how?

Perhaps more than either Rosa Parks or Jane Fonda, Cindy Sheehan is really the child in the fairy tale who declared that the emperor had no clothes. It was his unadorned innocence against the arrogant casuistry of the local pundits that finally awoke the town to what everybody could see but were too embarrassed to admit: they had been taken.

The servile idolatry of authority that so insecurely needs to suppress a lone woman's protest against such a transparent and tragic fraud as the War in Iraq is a far greater threat to America than is that simple protest itself. If we truly believe in America, the merits of the Iraq War notwithstanding, we must honor and defend Cindy Sheehan's act. Even more, we must join it to defend it against the faux patriots who would ruthlessly, happily silence not only Sheehan but all of the rest of us as well.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0814-20.htm

[Warham]

Seeing as how I'm like FOX news, I'm fair and balanced, so I presented the other side of the argument for you to decide.

[Phil theStalker]

Originally posted by Warham
Yeah, yeah, yeah...

Remember that the Vietnam War (Iraq War) was fought for reasons many Americans considered unworthy, but yet there was Jane Fonda (Cindy Sheehan) out there breaking down American morale, and causing our troops to get into more harm's way over in Southeast Asia (Iraq). When the guys came home, people were spitting on them in airports, calling them babykillers. Many vets felt like their country had turned on them. (might happen, we'll see).

Many vets, including my father, never forgave Fonda for those anti-war comments over the years. She was a traitor.

I don't remember Jane Fonda having a son killed in combat in Vietnam.

If I didn't believe in your right to speak your mind out as Sheehan is doing, I'd tell you t2o shutdafakup..

You know NOTHING.




ps your stupidity is disrespecting a lady like Ms. Sheehan and it's a good thing she doesn't have t2o read yoo..

have a goode nite

[Warham]

I respect her son, not her.

Big difference.

[Phil theStalker]

Originally posted by Warham
I respect her son, not her.

Big difference.

Yoo should respect everyboody, like i do..

respect da criminals and no torture..

r-e-s-p-e-c-t

find out wot tit means t2o mme

r-e-s-p-e-c-t

take care, TCB

yoo know dis is a mmmessage board, rite?!

[blueturk]

Originally posted by Warham
Yeah, yeah, yeah...

Remember that the Vietnam War (Iraq War) was fought for reasons many Americans considered unworthy, but yet there was Jane Fonda (Cindy Sheehan) out there breaking down American morale, and causing our troops to get into more harm's way over in Southeast Asia (Iraq). When the guys came home, people were spitting on them in airports, calling them babykillers. Many vets felt like their country had turned on them. (might happen, we'll see).

Many vets, including my father, never forgave Fonda for those anti-war comments over the years. She was a traitor.

Vietnam didn't have false WMD's, false expectations of warm welcomes, or a false end to major combat operations announcement with a "Mission Accomplished" photo-op 7 weeks after it's beginning.

Your comparisons of Jane Fonda and Cindy Sheehan are just more bleating. Whether you choose to recognize it or not, the majority of Americans are questioning the reasons for invading Iraq.Cindy Sheehan is not a spoiled, stupid, traitorous slut like Jane Fonda (I had relatives who were in Nam too). She isn't making posing next to somebody's head. Maybe she just wants to know the reason why we are in Iraq.

I've never heard anybody on either side of this issue condemn the troops. They are doing their job. Some people just wonder what the job is. The description changes so fucking often, who can tell?

Interesting how a true sheep like yourself feels compelled to compare this war to Vietnam.

"I think war is a dangerous place." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 7, 2003

[Warham]

The description only changes to you liberals.

I've known the reasons why we went into Iraq since 2003.

[DrMaddVibe]

Originally posted by Warham
The description only changes to you liberals.

I've known the reasons why we went into Iraq since 2003.

Most of America does too brudda! Its lost on the bitter and liberal crowd!

[FORD]

Originally posted by Warham
The description only changes to you liberals.

I've known the reasons why we went into Iraq since 2003.

Then maybe you should tell the Chimp, because he sure as Hell can't stick to one answer.

[4moreyears]

This woman is a nut. Does this mean that every relative of a person killed in combat should be able to demand a meeting with our President? I am sorry for her loss but she needs to move on with her life.