 
 
Reuters and Associated Press photos
Upper left: Mom on a mission Cindy Sheehan cries on Saturday after reading a poem about fallen soldiers that a supporter gave her at "Camp Casey" near "President" Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas. Cindy's 24-year-old son Casey was violently killed in Iraq in April 2004 for the war profits of Dick Cheney's Halliburton and other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp. Cindy established "Camp Casey" near Bush's ranch earlier this month to coincide with Bush's annual August vacation there. (It was during his annual August vacation at the ranch that Bush received the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing titled "[Osama] Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," in fact. [Hey, leave him alone! He was on vacation! Because he has to go on with his life, too, you know!]) Cindy has requested to meet with "War President" Bush, but he meets only with sycophants, war profiteers and major campaign donors, not with grieving mothers whose lives he has destroyed. Upper right: Cindy on Tuesday tries to compose herself during a press conference the morning after some brave, "patriotic" Texan asshole (I know, that's redundant) under the cover of darkness drove his redneckmobile over rows of white crosses representing U.S. war dead in Iraq near Bush's ranch. Lower left: Cindy appears to weep as she speaks in Crawford at one of the many anti-war vigils that took place across the nation last night. Lower right: Cindy cries after finding out today that her 74-year-old mother had a stroke. Cindy left Crawford today to be with her mother in California, promising to return to Crawford if her mother's condition allows.
She shouldn't have to cry
(and if we had prevented the Bush regime's
coup d'etat in 2000, she wouldn't be crying)
I feel for Cindy Sheehan.
She cries a lot, and I wish for her a day when her tears are far and few between.
Cindy lost her 24-year-old son Casey in April 2004 in a bogus war, a war waged only to line the pockets of those at Dick Cheney's Halliburton and other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp with billions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars and also with the wealth of the Iraqi people, who had already been beaten down by their unelected tyrant, Saddam Hussein.
I have seen Cindy speak twice here in Sacramento earlier this year. Because -- unlike the majority of the Bush-loving wingnuts who are dutifully bashing this grieving mother -- I actually have been in Cindy's presence (and exchanged a few e-mails with her earlier this year), I believe a few things about her:
- I believe that had Cindy's son Casey actually died for a noble cause, such as freedom, democracy, little fluffy bunnies and yellow butterflies -- as the Bush regime has repeatedly lied that Casey and more than 1,800 other U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis (and others) have died for -- that Cindy's grief would have been significantly less than it has been. Knowing that her son died not for anything at all noble, however, but that he died for corporate war profiteering, is, I believe, what has made Casey's death almost unbearable for Cindy -- and what turned her into an anti-Gulf War II activist.
- I believe that Cindy is no puppet of Michael Moore (certainly not to bash Moore, who, entirely unlike "President" Bush and all of his supporters, is a great American) or of anyone else. (She certainly is no puppet of the spineless and testes-free Democratic Party, which rubber-stamped George W. Bush's War on Iraq.) It is important for the wingnuts to allege that Cindy is a zombie under someone else's control in order to try to discredit her message. (And it's pretty fucking ironic, since they're the fucking zombies, the sheeple whose minds are being quite effectively controlled by the Bush regime's relentless propaganda machine, which only fairly recently has been starting to sputter and run out of steam.) Cindy is quite a self-possessed, very driven woman, so the wingnuts can go fuck themselves (of course, that is always the case). Cindy is driven by the unjust death of her son in April 2004 in the Bush regime's immoral, illegal, unprovoked and imperialist -- and, I will add, utterly un-Christian -- March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of the oil-rich, geopolitically strategic sovereign nation of Iraq. Jesus fucking Christ, what more fucking motivation does she need than the pointless, violent death of her son? (Pointless unless you're Halliburton, of course.)
- Cindy is one of the most patriotic Americans in whose presence I have ever been. I wish that I had a fraction of her courage and her determination. She is a woman on a mission. Blogging isn't much of a sacrifice. Having to brave, on a daily basis, the vicious attacks of wingnuts throughout the nation who call themselves patriots and Christians when they actually are fascistic anti-Christs -- these people are so fucking purely evil that they attack a grieving mother -- now that is a fucking sacrifice, one that Cindy Sheehan appears to be making for all of us Americans who are too lazy to lift a finger for our nation. (To truly fucking lift a finger for our nation, I mean, not to fucking slap a cheesy "Pray for Our Troops" magnet on our fucking SUV and then consider our patriotic duty fucking accomplished.)
- Cindy is wracked by grief. It is difficult for her to speak about her son and her work without breaking into tears. I hope that she is getting grief counseling, because I don't know how much grief a person can endure. While I don't want to judge someone's grief as "normal" or not, I was a hospice nurse for several years in the 1990s, so I do know a little about grief, and I have to wonder whether Cindy's level of grief is excessive (excessive as in harming her). That said, she certainly is not mad with grief, as the wingnuts certainly would allege if they haven't already (oh, I'm sure they have). I have heard her speak and the members of the press appear to throng at her press conferences; she is quite sane. She just cries an awful lot. (Of course, if any of us on the left were to say anything about a dead soldier's mother who supports the Bush regime that were to resemble anything like the bile and venom that the wingnuts have spewed at and regarding Cindy Sheehan, the wingnuts would be calling us America-hating terrorist-sympathizing treasonous slanderers.).
Lately, Cindy Sheehan's life is looking like Job's. First, her son was killed in the Bush regime's bogus war in Iraq for Halliburton. Her son's death took a toll on her marriage -- as a death in the immediate family often does to a marriage (duh) -- and her husband recently filed for a divorce. (Which is [1] understandable and [2] really no one's fucking business, but is between Cindy and her husband, from whom she had been separated before he filed for divorce.) Cindy's mother, 74, had a stroke today and so Cindy had to leave her vigil outside of "President" Bush's Perpetual Vacation Ranch in Crawford, Texas, and return here to California, where her mother is in a hospital in Los Angeles. Cindy says she'll try to return to the ranch, depending upon her mother's condition.
In the end, despite disaster after disaster, after loss after loss, everything works out for Job, and after his trials and tribulations he ends up even richer than he was before. I have a feeling that everything will work out for Cindy, that it has not been for no reason that she has become the conscience of a once-great nation that, under the oppressive thumb of the unelected, tyrannical, bloodthirsty, greedy, treasonous members of the Bush regime, lost its conscience and lost its way.
Trivia fun!: I have heard talk of Cindy possibly running against Democrat-in-name-only Dianne Feinstein, the pathetic incumbent, in California's U.S. Senate race in 2006. (It is my understanding that Cindy's supporters, one of whom I count myself, want her to run, not that it was Cindy's idea.) Cindy just this month alone has done more to take on the Bush regime than Feinstein has done since the Bush regime seized power in 2000. (In fact, Feinstein's husband is one of the war profiteers in Iraq -- it's just a coinky-dink that Feinstein has consistently supported Gulf War II, I'm sure.) If Cindy runs against the worthless, ultimately treasonous Feinstein, Cindy has my vote.
11:24:50 PM 
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