Cindy Sheehan Quits

Woah.

By Cindy Sheehan

I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes.

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a “grateful” country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.

Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.

I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.

Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too…which makes the property even more valuable.

This is my resignation letter as the “face” of the American anti-war movement. This is not my “Checkers” moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.

Good-bye America…you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

She certainly crossed the line between political activism and mild lunacy, but it is still strange to see her go.

Greeting Us As Liberators - the Four Year Rectal Itch

I've been toying with the idea of writing a satirical post about the four year anniversary of Bush's anal warts, but so far I haven't found the right tone or the joke that will make the story. IRAQ is not a good acronym for anything. Maybe I'll do a fake news story from the Conservative Republican Associated Press (aka: CRAP). Don't steal that, that's mine.

Until then, please enjoy these protest pictures from Bush's Latin American Trip, courtesy of the Guardian.


If you have any comedic ideas, comment here and I'll try to write it. I'll source you, too, if you have the best idea.

Lysol for Bush

I'm not making this up:

Priests to Purify Site After Bush Visit

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
The Associated Press
Friday, March 9, 2007; 12:20 AM

GUATEMALA CITY -- Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

The week's events from around the world, captured in pictures.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites _ which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles _ would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Bush's trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.

The tour is aimed at challenging a widespread perception that the United States has neglected the region and at combatting [sic] the rising influence of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has called Bush "history's greatest killer" and "the devil."

Iximche, 30 miles west of the capital of Guatemala City, was founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.

I love the Mayans.

Night After Night My Heartbeat Shows the Fear

The Democrats, like Ann Coulter's boyfriends, want to pull out as fast as possible....

What?! You know, because all her boyfriends are Democrats. They're not? Oh...

The story:

Democrats in both the House and the Senate have rallied together to push for an complete troop withdrawal (that's what he said... nyuk nyuk nyuk - okay, I'll stop) by Fall of 2008.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, March 8 — Democratic leaders in the House and Senate began a new legislative push on Thursday for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq in 2008, coalescing behind a fixed timetable to end the war.

The plan to establish a specific date for removing troops intensifies the confrontation with the administration at a time when Congress is scrutinizing President Bush’s request for nearly $100 billion in additional spending toward military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Republicans vowed to block the new Democratic effort, which they said amounted to micromanaging the war, and the White House immediately signaled its opposition.

“It would unnecessarily handcuff our generals on the ground, and it’s safe to say it’s a nonstarter for the president,” said Dan Bartlett, a senior White House adviser, speaking to reporters as he traveled with Mr. Bush to Latin America.

Speaking of Bush's trip to Latin America, his welcoming was much like it is here:

It's great being a liberator.

Anyway, The Democrats plan to attach the pullout plan to a war spending bill that the Administration requested for the wars in Afghanistan (remember that place?) and Iraq. Bush and the White House quickly threatened to veto, prompting Democrats to not give a crap. The pullout will be sooner, according to the plan, if the Iraqi Government doesn't fulfill its end of the agreement, strengthening its soldiers and keeping American soldiers out of danger.

Nancy Pelosi said that her biggest worry was that the far left wouldn't be on board, because the measure calls for a withdrawal in late 2008 rather than right this second, as is the oft-repeated desire of the liberal crowd, without driving away moderate democrats that want the generals not to "have their hands tied."

I choose to form an opinion when it happens.

Government Interference in Protesting

My Article of the Day, by Geoffrey Stone from the Guardian [photos added]:

You've decided to participate in an anti-Iraq war demonstration. Perhaps you've never done such a thing before. But you're troubled by the way things are going in Iraq and you want to express your concern. After bundling up against the cold and marching several blocks side-by-side with your protesting comrades you come upon a platform on which a burly man wearing a dark blue FBI jacket is videotaping the event. What is your reaction?

For many, perhaps most, people, this would generate a sense of anxiety. Why is he there? What's the point of videotaping the protest? Sure, channel 6 might do this, but why the Federal Bureau of Investigation? In all likelihood, you will begin to wonder whether this might land you in a file. At this point, you might begin to second-guess your decision to march. After all, whether you protest or not will have absolutely no effect on national policy. One marcher more or less is a matter of no consequence. But what if the FBI turns this photograph over to the Internal Revenue Service, or to your employer, or to your landlord? The next time someone asks you to march in a protest, sign a petition, or attend a lecture by a government critic, you just might think twice.

Such participation is a fundamental aspect of free speech. It is easily discouraged ("chilled") because our individual act of expression is unlikely to make a difference. But if many people are individually chilled, the overall impact on public discourse can be quite dramatic. This is why courts formulating First Amendment doctrine generally pay special attention to the dangers of chilling effect.

Unfortunately, courts generally pay attention to chilling effect only when the government is actually doing something to harm an individual because of his speech - for example, criminally prosecuting him, firing him or allowing him to be sued. In such circumstances, courts try to ensure that the law protect not only the person being prosecuted, fired or sued, but also those who might be deterred from speaking by the fear of being prosecuted, fired or sued.

Note, however, that in my demonstration hypothetical, the government isn't necessarily doing anything to directly harm anyone. It's only filming the event. And, so far as we know, the government isn't using the information to do anything improper. The fear is only that the government might do so. In this situation, which is quite common, courts are usually reluctant to allow individuals to challenge the government's conduct. If they can't prove the government has misused the information against them, they have nothing to complain about. Mere chilling effect is not enough. That you might never again exercise your First Amendment right to sign a petition or march in a demonstration because of your fear that the government will misuse the videotape is not a legally cognizable harm.

This is a very bad doctrine. It is why the government can usually get away with videotaping political demonstrations, demanding that bookstores and libraries turn over information about book buyers and borrowers, recording the names of those who attend particular mosques, and wiretapping phone calls when no single individual can prove that he was wiretapped. All of these techniques have been used by the Bush administration; all of them have a serious chilling effect; and under existing law it is very difficult for anyone to challenge the constitutionality of the government's conduct. The very fact that the government keeps secret what it does with the information prevents anyone from suing, even though the information gathering can have serious consequences for First Amendment activity.

There is one ray of hope. On February 15, federal Judge Charles S Haight, Jr ruled that the New York City police cannot - in the absence of any reason to believe that unlawful activity might be afoot - constitutionally videotape individuals who are peacefully exercising their First Amendment right to demonstrate against government policy. More than thirty years ago, Attorney General Edward Levi recognized this same principle. He adopted a Justice Department guideline prohibiting any FBI investigation of a political or religious organization or activity in the absence of reasonable grounds to believe that unlawful conduct was involved. Unfortunately, the Bush administration repealed that guideline. Hopefully, Judge Haight's decision will be a significant step toward fixing this glaring deficiency in American constitutional law.