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 Editorials | April 2006 
Cindy Sheehan Responds to Congressman's Attacks
 Cindy Sheehan - t r u t h o u t
| | Peace activist Cindy Sheehan (R) listens as Faiza Al-Araji of Iraq speaks to the media during a news conference to talk about ending the U.S. occupation in Iraq in front of the U.N. headquarters in New York last month. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed while on active military duty in Iraq, was later arrested with three others while trying to deliver a petition to stop the Iraqi war to representative of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. (Reuters/Keith Bedford) |
Congressman Kingston,
How dare you psychoanalyze me and call me a "nutcase!" How dare you call me a beatnik and lie about me in your blog!
First of all, April 4th, 2006, this upcoming Tuesday, will be the 2nd anniversary of my son's death. Casey Austin Sheehan was a man filled with integrity and courage. He was a hero who never backed down from the right thing his entire life. He was an amazing person who did not hide when his commander in chief sent him to a war based on lies even when he knew they were lies. He carried out his duty, unlike his commander in chief, who went AWOL from the Alabama Air National Guard (whoo ... tough duty), and he volunteered to serve his country, unlike the vice-commander in chief, who had "other priorities" during the Vietnam war. I am not against anyone getting out of that generation's mistake of a war, but to illegitimately come to power when they grew up and send an entire new generation off to fight, die and kill innocent people in their own war of choice for greed is unconscionable. I hope I am not using words that are too big for you.
Second of all, I have never called "terrorists" freedom fighters. I have called the resistance fighters who killed Casey such, but they are fighting to get the occupying forces out of their country and have a legitimate right to wage a resistance against occupiers. I don't like that they are killing our children - for God's sake, they killed my oldest child, my sweet and wonderful Casey. However, our government is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Iraq. Have you heard of white phosphorous? Have you heard of torture? Have you heard of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Have you heard about our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions?
Have you also heard that Saddam had nothing to do with the tragedy of 9/11 and that he had no WMD? How can you support a liar and his policies that are draining our precious life blood, depleting our military, sucking our treasury dry and have harmed, almost beyond repair, the people and land of the Gulf States hit by Hurricane Katrina? Have you heard that Osama bin Ladin is still at large and two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, that had nothing to do with 9/11 are devastated? I hope they can recover from George's brand of "freedom and democracy."
As to you having a problem with me meeting with Hugo Chavez, who survived a coup that was orchestrated by the Bush administration and has been democratically elected to his office 8 times? You can't pick and choose to support only the Democracies that agree with George Bush. I don't support everything that President Chavez stands for, but his people love him, and he is truly trying to make things better for the 80 percent of the people who were in poverty when he took over; has has reduced that figure to 37 percent. He is stealing from the rich to help the poor, whereas George Bush and his policies do the opposite. Hugo Chavez is not anti-American - he is anti-George Bush, and I have to agree with him on that. He has provided low cost heating fuel to underprivileged citizens in our own country and has donated at least $40,000 to the various aid organizations in the Gulf States.
Did you have a problem with George Bush kissing the sheik from Saudi Arabia when 16 of the terrorists that flew airplanes into our buildings on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia? Did you have a problem with Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand and selling him weapons that are now killing our children in Iraq? Do you have a problem with the fact that since your party's devastating invasion of Iraq, members of the so-called "Axis of Evil" have become more powerful and even more dangerous to America? Did you have a problem with George Bush wanting to sell our ports to Dubai, when they are one of the only countries on earth that recognize the Taliban? Did you have a problem with the bin Laden family being flown out of the United States days after 9/11, when our own citizens could not fly and many of us were trapped far from our homes ourselves? Did you have a problem with George, et al, ignoring all of the intelligence reports before 9/11 that said that terrorists were planning on "flying airplanes" into our buildings?
I am not a leftwing Democrat and I hold many of the members of that party as responsible as I hold your party and George Bush and his administration. I do not think that there is anything political about an illegal and immoral war.
Our country was founded on dissent and on the blood of "freedom fighters." I have every right to be doing what I am doing to try and stop the needless and unnecessary killing without being wrongly judged by you. I believe that you and anyone else who would deny me, and Michael Moore for that matter, our rights and responsibilities as patriotic Americans are the ones who are un-American and traitors to the American way of life. A member of your own party and a noted war-monger, Theodore Roosevelt, said:
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."
George Bush has admitted that Saddam had no WMD or ties to al-Qaeda. He has admitted to spying on Americans without due process and has called the Constitution an "old scrap of paper." He is responsible for the tragic deaths of thousands of people and for America losing its reputation in the international community, and to support his failed presidency is not only unpatriotic, as Teddy said, but is also a war crime.
I am not a nutcase and I am not an unpatriotic war criminal like you and others who still support the most failed presidency in the history of our country.
What I am is a devastated, broken-hearted mother who will mourn the needless death of my son for the rest of my life. I just want the killing to stop before there are anymore American or Iraqi Casey and Cindy Sheehans.
Peace soon,
Cindy Sheehan
Congressman Apologizes to Cindy Sheehan After Attacks
JackKingstonBlog.com - Monday, 03 April 2006
Dear Ms. Cindy Sheehan,
Thank you very much for your email. I appreciate your spirit in dialogue and debate and our mutual devotion to the First Amendment.
I want to apologize for my personal categorization of you and for allowing myself to get involved in such low-level name calling.
While you and I disagree on the war effort, I certainly did not intend to attack you personally. I have great appreciation for your perspective and your sacrifice as an American who has lost a loved one in the War on Terrorism.
This is a very emotional time in America, and my concern these days has been my 20,000+ constituent soldiers. As I have spoken with them in Iraq and their families back home they have expressed grave concern about the pessimistic media coverage of the war and its dissenters.
As you know, these volunteer soldiers aren't in it for praise but I do think their spirits are hurt by coverage that reports all the bad news and none of the good. Such coverage tends to focus on dissenters of the war and less on those in the field.
This isn't just my own personal opinion, but one that has been formulated by listening to the troops and their families. I suppose in my own stumbling way, I am trying to speak for them.
In any case, I hope you'll accept my apology and I look forward to continuing our discussion about this issue.
Sincerely,
Jack Kingston, Member of Congress
Congressman Jack Kingston's blog:
Cindy Sheehan IS A "Nutcase" March 31st, 2006
In today's CongressDailyAM (full story after the jump due to subscription), Sue Davis reports that Congressman Kingston got into a "discussion" yesterday in a closed-door meeting with two liberal Democrats regarding anti-war beatnik, Cindy Sheehan.
A closed hearing of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee turned contentious Thursday as Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., Subcommittee ranking member Jack Murtha, D-Pa., and others sparred over the meaning of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, heroes and military service.
According to one Democratic source present at the hearing, Kingston commented that Sheehan was "a nutcase" and lamented that too many of the human interest stories coming out of the war in Iraq center on anti-war activists like Sheehan and filmmaker Michael Moore and do not give proper service to heroic tales of U.S. soldiers.
"Who would argue that Cindy Sheehan's son is not a hero? I mean, come on," he said, chalking the exchange up to election-year politics.
"I think she is a very flaky woman," Kingston told CongressDaily. "I think we need more heroes. The only people that get press are people like Moore and Sheehan."
Cindy Sheehan is a nutcase. In fact, you may remember Cindy Sheehan from her recent trip to Venezuela for the World Social Forum where she met with Venezuela's anti-American leftist president, Hugo Chavez (pictured above).
Or you may recall how she refers to the terrorists who are killing American soldiers in Iraq as "freedom fighters." Check out this story by WorldNetDaily for more. The problem is that what Howard Dean famously termed the "democratic wing of the Democratic Party" has now completely taken over. |
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