Associated Press and Reuters photos
A smiling anti-bogus-Bush-war activist Cindy Sheehan, surrounded by supporters, is arrested today by U.S. Park Police for protesting in front of the White House without a permit, a misdemeanor. Cindy and other protesters had expected to get arrested, reports the Associated Press. If the cops want to arrest some real criminals at the White House, they should arrest George W. Bush and Laura Bush for trespass.
'The whole world is watching'
Reports The Associated Press today:
Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who became a leader of the anti-war movement following her son's death in Iraq, was arrested [today] along with dozens of others protesting outside the White House.
Sheehan, carrying a photo of her son in his Army uniform, was among hundreds of protesters who marched around the White House and then down the two-block pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue. When they reached the front of the White House, dozens sat down -- knowing they would be arrested -- and began singing and chanting "Stop the war now!"
Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests. One man climbed over the White House fence and was quickly subdued by Secret Service agents.
Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She smiled as she was carried to the curb, then stood up and walked to a police vehicle while protesters chanted, "The whole world is watching."
About 50 people were arrested in the first hour, with dozens of others waiting to be taken away. All cooperated with police.
Sgt. Scott Fear, spokesman for the U.S. Park Police, said they would be charged with demonstrating without a permit, which is a misdemeanor.
Park Police Sgt. L.J. McNally said Sheehan and the others would be taken to a processing center where they would be fingerprinted and photographed, then given a ticket and released. The process would take several hours, he said.
Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in an ambush in Sadr City, Iraq, last year. She attracted worldwide attention last month with her 26-day vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch.
The demonstration is part of a broader anti-war effort on Capitol Hill organized by United for Peace and Justice, an umbrella group. Representatives from anti-war groups were meeting [today] with members of Congress to urge them to work to end the war and bring home the troops.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush is "very much aware" of the protesters and "recognizes that there are differences of opinion" on Iraq. [Gee, Bush puppeteer Karl Rove recently called the anti-bogus-Bush-war movement "nonexistent." So I ask the Bush regime: Which is it? Do we exist or don't we?]
"It's the right of the American people to peacefully express their views. And that's what you're seeing here in Washington, D.C.," McClellan said. "They're well-intentioned, but the president strongly believes that withdrawing [from Iraq] ... would make us less safe and make the world more dangerous." [How would withdrawing from Iraq make us less safe and make the world more dangerous, Scotty? How?]
The protest [today] followed a massive demonstration Saturday on the National Mall that drew a crowd of 100,000 or more, the largest such gathering in the capital since the war began in March 2003.
[Yesterday], a rally supporting the war drew roughly 500 participants. Speakers included veterans of World War II and the war in Iraq, as well as family members of soldiers killed in Iraq.
"I would like to say to Cindy Sheehan and her supporters: Don't be a group of unthinking lemmings," said Mitzy Kenny of Ridgeley, W.Va., whose husband died in Iraq last year. She said the anti-war demonstrations "can affect the war in a really negative way. It gives the enemy hope."
My favorite paragraph of that news story is the very last one. "Don't be a group of unthinking lemmings," says Mitzy Kenny -- and with a name like Mitzy, she must be right.
OK, so this Mitzy person apparently has swallowed, hook, line and sinker, every lie that the Bush regime has tried to cram down Americans' throats, from the lie that the Bush regime won the 2000 presidential election fair and square to whatever the rationale for having invaded and now occupying Iraq is this week. Mitzy even dutifully parrots the Repugnican "argument" that to criticize the Vietraq War "gives the enemy hope."
What really gives the enemy hope -- lots of hope -- is the Bush regime's continuing slaughter of innocent Muslims in the Middle East, because what better recruitment tool for fundamentalist Islamist extremists is there than for the United States to continue to kill innocent Muslims in the Middle East?
George W. Bush is leading the United States of America off a fucking cliff, and Mitzy and her ilk are giddily following him toward that cliff -- yet Mitzy says that those of us real Americans who are trying to avoid that cliff are the "group of unthinking lemmings."
Can you say "projection"? (Look it up in your dictionary, Mitzy, if you have one. You probably don't.)
If Mitzy wants to be angry at someone for her husband's pointless death in Iraq, she might look at the people who sent her husband to Iraq in the first fucking place, based upon their bold-faced lies that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States and that Iraq had some connection to 9/11.
Instead, Mitzy vents her anger and her anguish at those who believe that her husband shouldn't have been sent off to slaughter in Iraq for Halliburton's war profits in the first place -- while she still supports those who are responsible for her husband's unnecessary death.
Fucking genius she is! People like Mitzy are so fucking stupid that I have to wonder how their brains generate enough electrical activity to keep their bodies functioning. And I have to wonder how long our nation can survive when it is so full of dumbfucks. A democracy, in order to survive, must have a minimum percentage of people who possess at least average intelligence and who aren't mentally lazy. The United States of America is critically low on such people.
Here's another story from the AP today, a summary of this past weekend's anti-bogus-Bush-war protest and pro-bogus-Bush-war demonstration in Washington, D.C.:
Spirits were high during weekend rallies in the nation's capital, but that's where the similarities ended, as one demonstration supported and the other opposed the war in Iraq.
The anti-war rally, held Saturday at the western edge of the National Mall, drew a crowd of 100,000 or more. Lasting a marathon 12 hours, it featured folk singer Joan Baez and Cindy Sheehan, the California mother whose 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Iraq last year. [Emphasis mine.]
Protesters also marched past the White House, the first time demonstrators have been allowed to do so since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings.
When Sheehan took the stage Saturday, she won a roar of approval from the crowd. She drew thousands of demonstrators and attracted wide media attention during a 26-day vigil outside the vacationing President Bush's Texas ranch last month.
"Shame on you," Sheehan admonished, directing that portion of her remarks to members of Congress who backed Bush on the invasion of Iraq. "How many more of other people's children are you willing to sacrifice?"
She led the crowd in chanting, "Not one more."
[Yesterday], a rally supporting the war drew roughly 500 participants, far below the 20,000 expected by event organizers. Held on the eastern edge of the Mall, the rally was over in about three hours. [Emphasis mine.]
Speakers included veterans of World War II and the war in Iraq, as well as family members of soldiers killed in Iraq.
"I would like to say to Cindy Sheehan and her supporters don't be a group of unthinking lemmings. It's not pretty," said Mitzy Kenny of Ridgeley, W. Va., whose husband died in Iraq last year. The anti-war demonstrations "can affect the war in a really negative way. It gives the enemy hope."
Kevin Pannell, a soldier who lost his legs from the knees down in Iraq, told the crowd he was amazed that Saturday's demonstrators were taking for granted their right to free speech.
"I would challenge those guys to go to Baghdad and say that," he said.
Counter-demonstrations occurred on both days, with members of each group shouting at each other. But no violent confrontations between demonstrators were seen.
"No matter what your ideals are, our sons and daughters are fighting for our freedom," said Marilyn Faatz, who drove from New Jersey to attend [yesterday's] rally. "We are making a mockery out of this. And we need to stand united, but we are not."
OK, so I just like reporting again that the pro-bogus-Bush-war wingnuts wanted 20,000 lemmings but could muster only 500 lemmings -- one-fortieth of their desired turnout.
Why the AP repeated the quote from Mitzy I'm not sure, and there's that quote of Faatz's again that I already chewed up and spat out.
I guess that because so few wingnuts can speak a coherent sentence, when there is such a low turnout of wingnuts you have to repeat in your news stories what few usable quotes that you are able to get.
This AP story does add Mitzy saying of those of us who oppose the Vietraq War, "It's not pretty," but I don't find a bunch of bloodthirsty, jingoistic, "my-country-right-or-wrong" Americans marching in lockstep like fucking Nazis in Washington, D.C., to be pretty; I find it to be quite fucking ugly.
Anyway, I find this part of the news story interesting:
Kevin Pannell, a soldier who lost his legs from the knees down in Iraq, told the crowd he was amazed that Saturday's demonstrators were taking for granted their right to free speech.
"I would challenge those guys to go to Baghdad and say that," he said.
Wow. How, exactly, Kevin, were the anti-bogus-Bush-war demonstrators taking their right to free speech for granted?
The wingnuts' position seems to be that the right to free speech is too sacred to actually ever be exercised. But I suspect that what's more the case is that the wingnuts love freedom of speech when they are exercising it and when they agree with the message; when they disagree with the message, however, then the messengers with whom they disagree are "taking their free speech for granted."
It's funny that the wingnuts talk so much about free speech when they would silence their opponents in a heartbeat -- if they could.
I am sorry that Pannell lost his legs in Iraq for the war profiteering of Dick Cheney's Halliburton and other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp.
I am sorry that he is so brainwashed and deluded as to actually believe that the Vietraq War really has to do with "freedom" and "democracy," blah blah blah -- and nothing whatsoever to do with the billions and billions of dollars that corporations like Halliburton are raking in, many of those billions of dollars still unaccounted for.
It would be painful to know that you lost your legs for corporate greed, that you were only used, duped, to make filthy rich men even richer, that you were -- and still are -- considered expendable by these plutocrats and aristocrats.
But only the truth, as painful as it might be, will set you free.
When I read the wingnuts' quotes in news stories it demonstrates to me, graphically, the chasm between their mindset and mine.
I mean, fuck: I have never and will never accept that George W. Bush was legitimately elected in 2000; if the wingnuts and I can't even agree on Bush's legitimacy, what else can we agree on? The wingnuts think that I have to accept George W. Bush's legitimacy. Memo to the wingnuts: No, I fucking don't have to accept shit.
Because Bush never was legitimately elected in the first place, his "re"-election last year was bullshit.
He is nothing to me but a criminal -- an election-stealing traitor and war criminal who was handed the United States of America in good shape and who in less than five years has run the once-great United States of America into the ground. Love him or hate him (my feelings toward him are somewhere in the middle, but closer to love than to hate), under President Bill Clinton we had relative peace and prosperity, and under George W. Bush we have war and poverty, just as we did when his daddy was president.
To support George W. Bush is to support the further running of this nation into the ground. Therefore, Bush's supporters, to me, are traitors, are aiding and abetting Bush in his destruction of this once-great nation.
There is no middle ground here. There is right and there is wrong and there are the worthless people in the middle who are too stupid and/or mentally lazy and/or too cowardly to pick a side, and to pick the right side.
2:34:32 PM 
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