http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/28/sheehan/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Quote :

"(CNN) -- Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who became an anti-war leader after her son was killed in Iraq, declared Monday she was walking away from the peace movement. She said her son died "for nothing." Sheehan achieved national attention when she camped outside President Bush's home in Crawford, Texas, throughout August 2005 to demand a meeting with the president over her son's death. While Bush ignored her, the vigil made her one of the most prominent figures among opponents of the war. But in a Web diary posted to the liberal online community Daily Kos on Monday, Sheehan said she was exhausted by the personal, financial and emotional toll of the past two years. She wrote that she is disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to bring the unpopular war to an end and tired of a peace movement she said "often puts personal egos above peace and human life." Casey Sheehan, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in an April 2004 battle in Baghdad. His death prompted his mother to found Gold Star Families for Peace. But in Monday's 1,200-word letter, titled, "Good Riddance Attention Whore," Sheehan announced that her son "did indeed die for nothing." "I have tried ever since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful," she wrote. "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." Cindy Sheehan's sister, DeDe Miller, told CNN that the group would continue working for humanitarian causes, but drop its involvement in the anti-war movement. As for her sister's letter, Miller said, "She cried for quite a bit after writing it." Sheehan warned that the United States was becoming "a fascist corporate wasteland," and that onetime allies among Bush's Democratic opposition turned on her when she began trying to hold them accountable for bringing the 4-year-old war to a close. In the meantime, she said her antiwar activism had cost her her marriage, that she had put the survivor's benefits paid for her son's death and all her speaking and book fees into the cause and that she now owed extensive medical bills. "I am going to take whatever I have left and go home," she wrote. "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.""

'Bout fucking time.

5/29/2007 10:26:46 AM

hahah she's broke

5/29/2007 10:34:22 AM

Quote :

"Good Riddance Attention Whore "

lol.

A lot of folks on the left are up in arms that the democrat majority refused to cut off funding for the war.

5/29/2007 10:35:53 AM

Quote :

" "I am going to take whatever I have left and go home," she wrote. "I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. "

she got it backwards... its the rest of her family that suffered for nothing

5/29/2007 11:11:14 AM

so she lost a son and the rest of her children lost a mother.


GG, bitch.

5/29/2007 11:20:47 AM

They just killed off her character so that they could later on have her return as something big to do for the season finale.

5/29/2007 11:42:35 AM

didn't her family (husband/children) basically disown her?

5/29/2007 11:46:31 AM

Quote :

"She wrote that she is disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to bring the unpopular war to an end and tired of a peace movement she said "often puts personal egos above peace and human life.""

5/29/2007 11:52:47 AM

well

she didn't learn the lesson of diligence

these sorts of activities do destroy your life

it's your choice whether or not you want to persevere

5/29/2007 12:23:52 PM

btw, mahatma gandhi is rolling his eyes

where ever he is

5/29/2007 12:24:55 PM

i feel sorry for her.

5/29/2007 1:28:21 PM

we all should

she lost a son and her life is awful

5/29/2007 1:30:55 PM

I feel sorry for her son, who's death has been a political topic... made so by his mother.

5/29/2007 1:35:32 PM

she loses her son in war

and then goes and takes pictures with a dictator??????

5/29/2007 1:38:16 PM

WHERE'S MY OJ PRIZE?

5/29/2007 1:38:43 PM

I too feel sorry for her. It always seemed like she really needed some counseling after the death of her son. I think we should all feel some sympathy for her and every family who have lost a loved one serving our country. Im glad she finally realized that she does have a surviving family that needs her more than a photo op with chavez.

5/29/2007 2:14:42 PM

and now that she's broke she can become a burden on taxpayers!

5/29/2007 2:20:52 PM

you people are real douches

this is obviously a women in pain who is suffering

why can't you see that?

5/29/2007 2:22:30 PM

because she's not the only one and she parades around like she is, abandoning her family, and shitting upon her son's grave for political spotlight.


That's not "pain" that's her "fifteen minutes."



why can't you see that?

[Edited on May 29, 2007 at 2:30 PM. Reason : .]

5/29/2007 2:26:54 PM

I get that this was an important issue for her, but she didn't help her cause one bit by acting like an attention whore. What did she expect? Did she think that bitching and moaning really loud would cause the government to change its ways? To get any change in our system, you either have to get enough people into office that support your policies (hard, especially if your policies go against the majority of the voter base) or contribute some serious campaign money (easy, so long as you have the cash). This was a losing battle from the start.

And it sounds to me like she basically ignored the rest of her family just to focus on one son. It's hard to garner sympathy for something like that imo.

5/29/2007 2:34:29 PM

at least she had the courage of her convictions.

in any event, its tragic all around.

3400 soldiers dead, untold iraqis dead (100,000? 500,000? the officials quit counting), disproportionate number of women and children maimed and killed....

and gas prices are through the roof.

well, at least the oil execs and defense construction contractors are doing well.

5/29/2007 2:40:11 PM

^ Sounds like Rosie O'Donnel's writer... I suppose we're the terrorists... huh?

5/29/2007 3:29:24 PM

you may someday come to the realization that you have become what you claim to despise

5/29/2007 4:06:52 PM

so tell me, Oeuvre (or wolfpack2k, whoever you are), what exactly are we doing in Iraq?

Because I've forgotten.

we're protecting good Americans against Iraqi WMDs right?

no wait. we're forcing a regime change to remove a genocidal psychotic dictator bent on destroying his own country, right?

no wait. we're instilling democracy to liberate the oppressed peoples and stabilize the region and transform a culturally backwards dirthole into a shining beacon of freedom for the rest of the muslim world, right?

no wait. we're taking the fight to the terrorists so they don't bring their jihad here, right?

no wait. hold on, hold on... i know its around here somewhere. i swear i just saw it.





[Edited on May 29, 2007 at 4:32 PM. Reason : ]

5/29/2007 4:22:40 PM

[Edited on May 29, 2007 at 8:01 PM. Reason : Bye.]

5/29/2007 8:00:34 PM

Quote :

"^ Thanks for sharing. Now, can we dispense with the fucking red herrings and deal with the topic?"

you want to play "fuck up each others threads with irrelevant bullshit" ?

cause i can play that game if you want.







[Edited on May 29, 2007 at 9:01 PM. Reason : ]

5/29/2007 9:00:05 PM

Quote :

"Because I've forgotten."

it seems most have. many never understood to begin with.


and fwiw, a picture of sheehan and chavez together like that... tells me all i need to know about whether or not i should give quarter to anything she has to say.

i feel sorry for her son that she lost, and for her other children that lost their brother and were put on the back burner for years by their mother who was ironically also pursuing her own political agenda, much like the democrats and republicans she refers to


[Edited on May 29, 2007 at 9:11 PM. Reason : ]

5/29/2007 9:10:09 PM

^If you understand, please, do tell.

I'm reading The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth, and so far my understanding is, "OH SHIT, WE FUCKED UP! NEW LIE! NEW LIE!"

[Edited on May 29, 2007 at 9:15 PM. Reason : sss]

5/29/2007 9:14:57 PM

Quote :

"you want to play 'fuck up each others threads with irrelevant bullshit' ? cause i can play that game if you want."

joe_schmoe

What's irrelevant? That the Democrats abandoned Joe Lieberman? That the Democrats abandoned timetables for withdrawal from Iraq? That the Democrats abandoned Cindy Sheehan? What the Democrats really should abandon is radical left-wing politics.

From Real Time with Bill Maher:

Bill Maher: "Yes, the Iraq funding bill that set a date for troop withdrawal, that's all gone by the wayside. The Democrats just backed down as they always do. But they did it with flair this time. They met on an aircraft carrier and they had a big banner that said 'mission abandoned.'"

From The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

Jon Stewart: "When the Democrats took control of Congress, they informed President Bush they would no longer fund his Iraqi adventure unless the bill included troop withdrawal timetables."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. [on tape]: "There's a new Congress in town."

Sen. Charles Schumer [on tape]: "The rubber stamp days are over."

Stewart: "Well, good news! The Democrats dug around and they found their rubber stamp."

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/Funnies/story?id=3216503

Let me guess: Those TV shows just aren't as funny as they used to be, am I right?





[Edited on May 29, 2007 at 11:10 PM. Reason : .]

5/29/2007 11:00:13 PM

^ So you're decrying the democrats for abandoning Sheehan and a timeline, both things viewed as left-wing by the right, THEN you call on the Democrats to do the same thing you just decried.

Maybe you should abandon craziness.

5/29/2007 11:05:52 PM

^Yeah, I'm trying to decipher (y?) what he's talking about, and I'm not getting it.

What are the Democrats pushing that is so "radical?" Universal healthcare? Cause they definitely shouldn't abandon that. Folks is eating that shit up.

And Lieberman's bitch ass deserved abandoning...

5/29/2007 11:10:19 PM

her son knew what he was getting into when he enlisted

what a silly attn whoring bitch

5/29/2007 11:10:36 PM

^^ He also seems to be under the false impression that the people who don't like Bush here must take their cues from the Democratic politicians.

5/29/2007 11:14:55 PM

^^I think what he's getting at is that lately, they've been BS'ing their constituents even more than ever. Though, I must say, The Repub's are getting pretty off-base too.

I'm finding myself feeling less and less party-aligned every day. I used to be a proud Republican, but these days, half of them are as embarassing as most of the Dem's. :\

5/29/2007 11:16:12 PM

the dems havent abandoned sheehan because they sincerely care about her...they werent just using her

the dems really care about the war and the dead soldiers...they do NOT simply use the war as a political tool

5/29/2007 11:16:21 PM

sheehan's major problem is that she was a political neophyte. she jumped into the political fire solely on a mother's passion to make sense of her sons tragic death.

she didn't have the political savvy to protect herself against spinmasters from either side. there were definitely people on both sides who used her fame/notoriety to further their own goals.

im surprised she lasted as long and went as far as she did.

guess what though. your children are going to be reading about her in their US History classes. she's going to be remembered as a sort of "rosa parks" of the early 21st century. on a smaller scale of course. but a martyr of sorts nonetheless.

so all you people gloating over her "resignation" now, consider the old saying: "won the battle, but lost the war"




[Edited on May 30, 2007 at 12:52 AM. Reason : ]

5/30/2007 12:50:29 AM

^You make it sound like she lost the battle but won the war.

I'm not "gloating" over her resignation, but I agree with you that she got in way over her head, in an arena in which she couldn't cut it to begin with. She jumped in for purely emotional reasons, not caring about anything else, and has now seen what the political system does to you if you don't have the appropriate resources or, as you put it, the political savy. She lashed out, got raped in the ass, and now has basically said "this is no longer worth it." Which she might have realized sooner had she not been so heavily emotionally-invested.

Again, I get why she took this all so personally, but that's pretty much what robbed her of momentum. Sure she said some stuff that most people can agree with, such as the futility and illegitimacy of the war, but the majority of it was her making a big stink out of her son dying (a soldier dying in a war? Say it ain't so!). She isn't the only one to lose a child in this manner, yet none of the other parents have nearly as much noise, if any. So the fact that her situation isn't all that unique doesn't make people any more sympathetic than they can already be. Other shit such as shaking hands with Chavez does not cause a lot of people in this country to align to her cause. That's the sort of shit that says "I hate America and its way of life" instead of "I hate what the American government and administration has become." Basically, don't be a playa hata, hate the game.

[Edited on May 30, 2007 at 1:51 AM. Reason : grammar]

5/30/2007 1:50:37 AM

somehow i simultaneously agree and disagree with you. but im not going to try and dissect the finer points.

yes, i am saying that Sheehan has (ultimately, in the long term) won her war.

and Bush has all but lost his. the tide in America has completely shifted. even the Republicans have had it with BushCo's spectacular fuckups, and his legacy will be to go down in the history books as an abysmal failure.

Sheehan OTOH, is a tragic figure, in a number of ways, but once the dust clears... will likely go down in history as a something of a martyr.

obviously Sheehan, as an individual contributor, was not especially effective ( in part due to her questionable associations)... but she'll be associated as a leader within the larger movement that eventually won out over the chickenhawks in the Administration who designed this failed war plan.

Of course, all this is at a basic middle/high-school history level. not a complex or academic historical analysis. just what kids will learn memorize 20 years from now.

You know, the Fill-in-the-Blank type of shit: (7) Cindy Sheehan --> (B) a soldier's mother who led the popular movement against Bush 43's failed Iraq War policies in the early 21st Century.







[Edited on May 30, 2007 at 3:31 AM. Reason : ]

5/30/2007 3:21:41 AM

^ Evidently, things haven't shifted as much as you think or would like. The Democrats lost the political battle on surrender timetables last week, and they could stop funding the war at any time--but they just don't have the courage of their convictions. As a result, many of their constituents are rightfully pissed:

EXCLUSIVE: MoveOn Privately Demanding House Dem Leaders Toughen Up Iraq Bill

Quote :

"MoveOn's Washington director, Tom Matzzie, confirmed in an interview that the group told people in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office this afternoon that they were unhappy with two major components of the bill. He said that the bill lacks tough enough enforcement language -- meaning that the bill doesn't contain strong enough provisions to compel withdrawal after the deadlines set forth in the legislation. Such language was removed from earlier drafts, frustrating some liberal House Dems, and the current version merely declares the war illegal after the deadlines, rather than stopping funding, which could mean Congress would have to take the White House to court to stop the war."

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/mar/14/move_on

And see my post above--even liberals are joking the Democrats: "mission abandoned," "rubber stamps," and so on.

5/30/2007 4:10:28 AM

Quick question: why did the Democrats back down so easily from these issues? It's not as if they wouldn't have popular support, and it sounds to me like they could pretty much kill this war with merely a gesture as it is anyway. With the knife pretty much at Bush and company's throat, why are they chickening out?

5/30/2007 5:33:48 AM

If the Democrats stop the war now, what issue are they going to use to win the White House in '08?

Iraq is political fodder, just like abortion and gay marriage. It will be tossed back and forth between Republicans and Democrats. The only winners will be those who manage to gain office exploiting those issues. Nothing will be 'solved' in any meaningful way.

Republicans --> Lack the conviction to fully prosecute the war as a war, i.e. too much pussy-footing around.

Democrats --> Lack the conviction to stop the war, though it is within their power to do so (or at least it's within their power to be much more hardline than they are).

5/30/2007 6:24:04 AM

Quote :

"If the Democrats stop the war now, what issue are they going to use to win the White House in '08?"

Oh I dunno, maybe plans for a national healthcare system? The "war" on drugs? Raising or lowering of taxes? Social security (or it's inevitable collapse thereof)? There's ALWAYS some kind of issue to be addressed. Besides, if the Democrats take care of the war now, aren't people going to remember that come election time? "Hey, these guys managed to stop the bullshit war! They know how to get things done, and don't just make empty campaign promises!" But it's possible that I'm giving our political system too much credit.

5/30/2007 6:57:45 AM

Quote :

"why did the Democrats back down so easily from these issues? "

Here's the REALITY, which most mainstream Democrats recognize.

...you can agree that the war is morally and legallly wrong.

...you can say that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Perle/Wolfowitz/Gonzalez and the rest of the war profiteering torture advocates need to be brought up on war crimes charges.

...you can characterize BushCo foriegn policy in the Mideast in general and Iraq in particular as clueless, ignorant and completely misguided ... or arrogant and racist and evil. whichever scenario you choose, you can make a strong case for it, and show how it is ultimately damaging our country to an extreme not seen since at least LBJ's expedition in Southeast Asia.

but the fact is, WE -- as a country -- went in and invaded a sovereign nation without cause, and COMPLETELY FUCKING BROKE IT.

now we cant just back out and say "whoops, never mind" and let it descend into complete sectarian civil war and anarchy.

what we essentially have done, is turn a totalitarian but (relatively) pro-western secular regime that was in some sense supported by the U.S., which acted as a stablizing force of modernity in the region against the pressures of extremist Islamic theocracy (ie, Iran) ...

and have essentially turned it loose to the forces of extremist Islamic theocracy (ie Iran).

guess who is going to be the winner here? Iran. the only question is HOW MUCH are they going to win.

It was said before we ever invaded, and it is absolutely true:

Quote :

"Iraq: you break it, you own it. --Colin Powell "

thats why the majority of the Democrats are NOT in favor of cutting and running. what BushCo has done is immoral and illegal. to pull out and say "fuck it" before fixing what we broke, would be doubly so.




[Edited on May 30, 2007 at 12:59 PM. Reason : ]

5/30/2007 12:58:06 PM

Quote :

"thats why the majority of the Democrats are NOT in favor of cutting and running"

i dunno...seems like just a week or two ago the majority of Democrats wanted Congress to deny any more war funding to Bush...and to set a "cut and run" timetable to end the war (troop occupation)...now the majority of Democrats are NOT in favor of cutting and running? oh well, whatever works this week I suppose

5/30/2007 1:06:36 PM

Quote :

"But it's possible that I'm giving our political system too much credit."

You are. None of those other issues are as polarizing, or as likely to turn out voters, as Iraq is right now. If the Democrats were to force an end to the war now, people may not forget by 2008, but voting Democrat to reward Democrat is somewhat less compelling than voting Democrat to punish Republican.

And don't fall into the trap of believing one party is more virtuous than the other just because you happen to agree with their stand on something. Both parties are repulsive.

5/30/2007 6:58:44 PM

^ That's why I'm unaffiliated.

5/31/2007 12:08:55 AM

Quote :

"Both parties are repulsive."

No doubt. Both parties are pretty much identical, having no problem calling out the other on even the smallest slip-up, but when it comes time to deal with their own bullshit they just sweep it under the rug and hope you won't notice.

Yeah, few issues aside, we don't really get to choose between "right" or "left" anymore, simply "shitty" and "slightly not as shitty."

5/31/2007 10:46:31 AM

Quote :

"Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Perle/Wolfowitz/Gonzalez "

?????


Do you just repeat everything you hear? Gonzales was 3 or 4 years late on this whole "war" thing. He just fired some democrat US attorneys.

5/31/2007 4:12:54 PM

^ I guess the fact that he advocated the use of torture while General Counsel to Bush back before the war began doesn't matter...

5/31/2007 4:39:04 PM

Quote :

"thats why the majority of the Democrats are NOT in favor of cutting and running. what BushCo has done is immoral and illegal. to pull out and say "fuck it" before fixing what we broke, would be doubly so."

Exactly. Iraq is a convenient political issue but the left knows that, beyond rhetoric, we can't just leave. Men and women will continue to die in order to ensure the flow of cheap oil. If you think $3 is expensive, watch Iraq be overrun by the Iranians and the future of the Iraq's oil be put in jeopardy while Saudi Arabia faces an extremely powerful Shia neighbor to the north.

Jefferson had it right when he talked about slavery, "We have the wolf by the ears, we cannot hang on to it forever, but we dare not let it go."

5/31/2007 4:40:10 PM