November 3, 2008 at 20:05:37

Cindy Sheehan Knows Her Power

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By Joyce Lynn (about the author) Page 3 of 4 page(s)

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As Americans learned how Bush's lies precipitated the Iraq war, the Pentagon's story about Casey's death also unraveled. Five months after Casey died, another military representative visited Cindy to augment the Army's account Casey volunteered for the Sadr City rescue. The story had troubled Cindy since she first heard it. After her Mother's Day dream, the Pentagon's explanation rang hollow.

Journalists returning from Iraq told Cindy friendly fire killed Casey. Although she lacks conformation of the report, Cindy is certain the military commanders used the 1st Cavalry as "rabbits to draw fire."

"Then, I was so naive and unaware about what happens in the military. Now, from friends, who are Iraq vets, I have learned it happens so many times -- they tell you how (your loved ones) were good soldiers, how brave they were. There is no doubt about that, Casey was, but you don't volunteer for these missions, you are told, 'You and you and you and you are going.'

"That day, (the U.S. troops) did not even have armored vehicles. They sent them out on the back of Humvees and trailers with no protection."

Finally, Cindy understood the Mother's Day dream. "Casey was trying to tell me the Army made him kill himself," Cindy said. The Army sent Casey on a suicide mission.

After Cindy's ascent as the voice of the grassroots international peace movement, war proponents excoriated the soft-spoken mother in blistering terms for "failed patriotism."

Yet, it was Bush who mocked U.S. troops and belittled Americans about his own deliberately false premise for war. Less than two weeks before Casey died in the slums of Baghdad, Bush in a skit at the black-tie White House Correspondents' dinner in Washington D.C., pretending to look under and around furniture, quipped: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere. Nope, no weapons over there... Maybe under here." The Washington media and their guests in the Bush administration chortled and laughed.

Before the 2006 Congressional election, when the Democrats were the minority party, Cindy collaborated with Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) to craft a road map to impeach Bush for his deceptions about the war. But Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), then House minority leader, told colleagues in early 2006, she did not believe Bush had committed any crimes.

In November, 2006, voters put Democrats in the majority in Congress to end the occupation and hold Bush responsible for the war. But even before she became House Speaker, Pelosi took impeachment off the table, giving Bush a blank check to wage the Iraq war for two more years. When Pelosi shunned peace demonstrators outside her San Francisco home, she morphed into Bush refusing to meet Cindy in Crawford.

Cindy criticized leaders of both parties, including Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and John Kerry (D-MA) for their votes authorizing the invasion of Iraq and funding the occupation.

Cindy called for Bush's impeachment in early 2007 and said she would challenge Pelosi for her San Francisco Congressional seat in the 2008 election unless the House Speaker moved to impeach Bush.

Pelosi refused to sanction hearings to collect evidence about impeachable offenses, and she quashed others' impeachment efforts. She consigned Conyers, by then chair of the Judiciary Committee where impeachment hearings originate, to writing a white paper on the Unitary Executive. Democrats backed down on efforts to end the war in the face of Bush and Republican opposition.

So, in July. 2007, as she turned 50, Cindy, with a photograph of Casey taped to the podium, announced her candidacy for California's 8th Congressional District, the San Francisco seat Pelosi has held since 1987. (Cindy is running for Pelosi's Congressional seat, not for Speaker of the House. Democrats in the House select their leaders at the beginning of each new session of Congress.)

Betrayed by both political parties, Cindy, a life-long Democrat, would run as an independent. "Here, in the USA," she explained, "most of us put our faith in a two-party system that has failed peace and justice consistently and repeatedly."

Cindy issued a campaign-like manifesto in May 2008: "Blood is being poured into the bank accounts of the ruling elite while it is being drained out of our soldiers, families, and communities..."

She charged under Pelosi's leadership, Congress gave Bush "more than a 1⁄2 trillion dollars for the Iraq war Pelosi said she wanted to stop" and more than 1,200 U.S and thousands of Iraqis have died.

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Joyce Lynn is a journalist, including eight years as a political reporter in Washington, D.C. She writes about the intersection of intuition, information, and imagination at Plum Dreams Journal, http://www.plumdreams.com.

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