Media Darling

Cindy Sheehan has gotten an amazing amount of media attention. I can't help but think that if she were protesting FOR the war we would not be hearing too much about it. Finally, I get to read a newspaper editorial that spells it out almost completely correctly. It's the first time (that I've seen anyway) where the news media even mentions that President Bush already met with her. It did not mention her 180 degree turn around since that meeting though. Who got to her to change her mind? Or is her grief driving her insane? No one will ever know I suppose. Her husband and family are asking her to stop. I feel sorry for them to have to watch her spew nonsense that really serves no purpose other to make good sound bites for CNN and MSNBC. To end I'll leave you with this scathing piece on her that makes many good hard points.

note: I too was amazed to find that editorial in the New Haven Register. (for those who refuse to join the paper here is the complete text)

08/19/2005
EDITORIAL Cindy Sheehan makes her point
A New Haven Register editorial
Cindy Sheehan has already met with the president once. And after she set up camp outside his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush’s national security adviser and deputy White House chief of staff met with her for 45 minutes. She wants another meeting with Bush to talk about the war in Iraq and the death of her 24-year-old son, Casey, there last year. Bush could meet with her, but he should expect a harangue, not a conversation.
Sheehan has placed herself on the far-left fringe of the war protest movement. She has already accused Bush of lying and killing her son. She also seems to hold Israel responsible as well. In an e-mail to ABC, she wrote that her son "was killed for lies and for a PNAC neo-con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel."Sheehan refused to pay her 2004 taxes as a war protest and arrived in Crawford on a bus that announced an "impeachment tour."Sheehan, who also opposes the war in Afghanistan, wants Bush to take all troops out of Iraq now. But such a withdrawal would "send a terrible signal to the enemy," as Bush notes. It would undermine a still forming Iraqi government and likely plunge the country into a full- scale civil war.Her son joined the Army voluntarily. Sheehan has converted his death into her own cause, one that other members of her family do not support."She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son’s good name and reputation," according to a letter signed by Casey Sheehan’s paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.Sheehan has enlisted a public relations firm, a willing media in a slow news month, and much of the antiwar left to voice her protest of the war. She and Bush do not agree, but he has heard her message. She can go home now or stay, if she likes the Texas heat, until Bush returns to Washington.