Cynical Nation

If i was her, i'd probably prefer it too. That way i'd get a hefty "living-wage", free health care, access to Cuba's top doctors, and lovely heating oil.

I would be especially blessed by Chavez if I was able to get print in the US media for blasting US imperialism.

Why is she insane? What did she say?

Fair question, BW.

I actually heard the comments but can't (surprise, surprise) find the transcript.

She commented that Chavez is beloved by his countrymen having been re-elected 7 times, how he sent oil at discounts to people of New England and support to victims of Katrina.

The woman is an embarassment but is kept viable by the media by failing to report on her over-the-top statements which would turn most (not you, BW) Americans against her.

She is, in the old Lenin term, a 'useful idiot' for the media and the left.

The problem is not Cindy Sheehan. She lost her son. She is entitled to be crazy. The problem is the ghoulish way the left has turned her into a celeberty and paraded her around to further their adgenda.

The problem is not Cindy Sheehan. She lost her son.

I agree with that. The problem is not her. The problem are the people (i.e. Bush, Cheney) who deliberately lied to start this unnecessary war. The loss of her son drove her crazy, but she is not responsible.

The loss of her son drove her crazy, but she is not responsible.

In a word: bunk.

There are thousands of families who have lost a child during this conflict.

Yet the left and the media recognize Sheehan for the very reason that she speaks ill of Bush at every turn as compared to the majority of the aforementioned families who still support the war effort. That viewpoint is uninteresting to the media.

Hugo Chavez is a thug and a dictator who has put opposition papers out of business and whom has expressed a desire to declare himself president for life - hardly the stuff of warm and fuzzy leaders.

Sheehan's family has disavowed her and rightly so. She dishonors her son with her every utterance. She was far left before the war began and now she has a forum to express those views.

I find her reprehensible and have long since lost any pity towards her.

Mal,
You make statements that you can not substantiate. Sheehan may have gone a little too far, but she is a person of integrity. She may have been driven crazy by the loss for her son but she has integrity and means well. I would not say the same for politicians that deliberately lie.

Oh really, BW?

Try this:

The family of American soldier Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, has broken its silence and spoken out against his mother Cindy Sheehan's anti-war vigil against George Bush held outside the president's Crawford, Texas ranch.

The following email was received by the DRUDGE REPORT from Casey's aunt and godmother:

Our family has been so distressed by the recent activities of Cindy we are breaking our silence and we have collectively written a statement for release. Feel free to distribute it as you wish.

Thanks, Cherie

In response to questions regarding the Cindy Sheehan/Crawford Texas issue: Sheehan Family Statement:

The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect.

Sincerely,

Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins.

Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins.

And what makes you think that Sheehan's grandparents and uncles have better judgement than her?

And this from the Boston Globe:

But there's more than that to Sheehan's politics. She is not simply against the war in Iraq (and, as she told talk show host Chris Matthews on CNBC, against the war in Afghanistan as well). She has thrown in her lot with the hardcore Michael Moore left, [B]and this less savory aspect of her crusade has been largely ignored by the respectful media.[/B]

In her public appearances, Sheehan has not only called Bush ''the biggest terrorist in the world" but suggested that his ''band of neocons" deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to happen: [B]''9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through," she told a cheering crowd at San Francisco State University last April.[/B]

That crowd, by the way, was holding a rally in support of Lynne Stewart, a radical New York attorney convicted in 2003 of aiding and abetting a terrorist conspiracy. Sheehan compared Stewart -- who served as a liaison between her incarcerated client, terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and his network outside -- to Atticus Finch, the lawyer in ''To Kill a Mockingbird" who heroically defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in the Jim Crow South.

Even more troubling opinions have surfaced in an e-mail Sheehan sent to ABC News last April: ''Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC [Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think thank] Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. [B]My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel."[/B]

BW, just doesn't seem to be your day!

From Powerblog:

Sheehan has always been a "vocal opponent of the war;" her opposition had nothing to do with "reports of faulty prewar intelligence." By her own account, as we noted here, Sheehan was bitterly opposed to the war before her son Casey re-enlisted in August 2003:

I begged Casey not to go. I told him I would take him to Canada. I told him I would run over him with a car, anything to get him not to go to that immoral war. *** The U.N. weapon inspectors were saying there were no weapons of mass destruction. So I believed all along that this invasion was unnecessary and that there was some other agenda behind it besides keeping America safe.
So, far from having been turned into a "vocal opponent" some time after her son's death, Ms. Sheehan already considered the war "immoral" before he re-enlisted in 2003, and she never did believe the intelligence about WMDs.

Hey Mal,
As I said, I believe the woman has gone crazy. However, some (and I emphasize some) of the things she says make sense. Like her call to get out of Iraq now. Of course the bizzare statements about 911 (I did not know before you posted it that she had said things like that) or her opposition to the war in Afganistan are clearly insane.

BW, I have no qualms with your agreeing with her about the war. I also opposed it.

But don't you see, the media has created a template for her that she is merely a grieving mother when she is far more than that. Rather, she is the female equivalent to the young man who was beheaded and whose father refuses to blame al Zaqawri, choosing instead to blame Bush.

Look, when al Zaqawri was killed, whom did the media seek out for comment?

Yeah, it was the old man and he didn't disappoint them. Anything to dull the victory.

There is a veritable ton of stuff from Sheehan that the Times and others will not report because it defeats their purpose of keeping her as an implacable victim of Bush.

All I ask is that you realize that you are being manipulated by the MSM for their own agenda, my friend.

Oh, and one last - never make the mistake in assuming I cannot substantiate my comments. I don't deal in hypotheses.

"You make statements that you can not substantiate."

"The problem are the people (i.e. Bush, Cheney) who deliberately lied to start this unnecessary war."

(BW)
Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and BERNARD E. TRAINOR
March 12, 2006
NY Timesonline

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/international/middleeast/12saddam.html?_r=2&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1142132938-g+zmA6soi5lK28n2EbRmqQ&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the American advance.
But Saddam Hussein and his small circle of aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war. Convinced that the main danger to his government came from within, Mr. Hussein had sought to keep Iraq's bridges intact so he could rush troops south if the Shiites got out of line.

General Hamdani got little in the way of additional soldiers, and the grudging permission to blow up the bridge came too late. The Iraqis damaged only one of the two spans, and American soldiers soon began to stream across.
The episode was just one of many incidents, described in a classified United States military report, other documents and in interviews, that demonstrate how Mr. Hussein was so preoccupied about the threat from within his country that he crippled his military in fighting the threat from without.

Only one of his defenses — the Saddam Fedayeen — proved potent against the invaders. They later joined the insurgency still roiling Iraq, but that was largely by default, not design.

Ever vigilant about coups and fearful of revolt, Mr. Hussein was deeply distrustful of his own commanders and soldiers, the documents show.
He made crucial decisions himself, relied on his sons for military counsel and imposed security measures that had the effect of hobbling his forces. He did that in several ways:

¶The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense...

"....In December 2002, he told his top commanders that Iraq did not possess unconventional arms, like nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, according to the Iraq Survey Group, a task force established by the C.I.A. to investigate what happened to Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Hussein wanted his officers to know they could not rely on poison gas or germ weapons if war broke out. The disclosure that the cupboard was bare, Mr. Aziz said, sent morale plummeting.

To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.

Mr. Hussein's compliance was not complete, though. Iraq's declarations to the United Nations covering what stocks of illicit weapons it had possessed and how it had disposed of them were old and had gaps. And Mr. Hussein would not allow his weapons scientists to leave the country, where United Nations officials could interview them outside the government's control.

Seeking to deter Iran and even enemies at home, the Iraqi dictator's goal was to cooperate with the inspectors while preserving some ambiguity about its unconventional weapons — a strategy General Hamdani, the Republican Guard commander, later dubbed in a television interview "deterrence by doubt."

That strategy led to mutual misperception. When Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed the Security Council in February 2003, he offered evidence from photographs and intercepted communications that the Iraqis were rushing to sanitize suspected weapons sites. Mr. Hussein's efforts to remove any residue from old unconventional weapons programs were viewed by the Americans as efforts to hide the weapons."

Saddam may have been lying (he may have cleaned up his country before the attack, relying on promises from interested countries to protect him so long as he wasn't caught with their WMD tech), but if Saddam's top generals assumed he had WMD's, how can it be said Bush lied?

Can a foreign President really be expected to have better intelligence than a country's top military leaders?

Of course NOT.

BW, you have a penchant for mistaking your opinions for facts.

Moreover, the previous administration seriously considered invading Iraq back in 1998.

That's where the, "There were plans for an invasion of iraq already on the President's desk well before 9/11" came from.

Yes, it was WELL before 9/11/01...about three years BEFORE 9/11 to be exact.

Unfortunately, the Clinton administration, possibly distracted by the Lewinsky controversy, decided on a bombing campaign and enforcing the "No Fly Zones" with jet fighters.

John Kerry called that action, "Not nearly enough," apparently advocating for a full scale invasion (probably in a rare lucid moment) of that rogue state.

I agree with mal and JMK. People forget that Iraq was a pain in the keester for both parties since 1991. One can guess that sooner or later we would have to deal with it and it wouldn't be clean or easy.
I especially like mal (nothing against you, JMK). He/she was opposed to the war but does not let their opinions step in the way of facts. I've been to blogs left and right and man do they pull out the same points they were saying 3 years ago regardless of changes in the Iraq war - either "Bush is a lying/neocon terrorist" or "liberals hate America and are treasonous" Yawn

No worries Rachel, and it's not just "Liberals" who are against the war.

Many, MANY Libertarians (from Ron Paul to Justin Raimondo and Lew Rockwell) have opposed the war.

Even hardcore Conservativews, like Pat Buchanan, have steadfastly opposed the war.

NONE of those people are "treasonous" or "America-haters," in my view.

Of course, those who compare the current adsministration to the Third Reich (Sheehan, Moore, Soros, MoveOn.org, AAR etc) and those who call Bush "the world's biggest terrorist" (Sheehan, Moore, Soros. MoveOn.org, AAR, etc) certainly are borderline "treasonous," in many instances and often "anti-American" in their rhetoric.

There are two main problems I have with the more emotional anti-war fanatics, the first is the "BUSH (administration) LIED" nonsense.

The above posted NY Times article showed that Saddam's own Generals believed Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and a nuclear WMD program with which to repel a U.S. led invasion.

No foreign government can be expected to know more about another nation's capabilities than that nation's own Military leaders.

In a recent Larry King interview, Bill Clinton siad that Bush acted on the same information he had back in 1998 and there was no reason to believe that information changed (to iraq's benefit) in the intervening years. Otherwise the rest of the world's Intelligence agencies would not have agreed with our own CIA about Iraq being a threat to both America (the West) and American interests.

The second is the "We can't win the war in Iraq," nonsense.

The WAR in Iraq ended when Saddam Hussein's government fell, three weeeks into the conflict - "Mission Accomplished."

What has beeen a debacle of sorts, has been to post-war insurgency, fueled largely by Sunni resentment within Iraq and jihadist fighters streaming in from other rogue states, most notably Iran and Syria.

There are a myriad of legitimate grievances against the way the post-war insurgency has been handled, the one I agree with most is Michael Scheuer's (author of Imperial Hubris) assertion that we're fighting "too politically correct a war and not killing ENOUGH of our enemies."

I give you credit for being a fair and open minded person Rachel.

Why are we even discussing this situation? They didn't have WMDs and they obviously knew that before going in. They had no ties with 911 and they obviously knew that before going in. They were no threat to us and they obviously knew that before they went in.They had a miriad of lies to get us into Iraq, hundreds of thousands of innocents have died as a result and what are we discussing? They have committed the ultimate criminal act and the corporate press is pretending they can't see that? Is it their corporate media bosses they are worried about, because the truth is staring them in the face and they pretend not to be able to see it. They had no trouble digging up every girlfriend that Clinton ever looked at and no trouble bombarding us with lies about Kerry's military record but seemed not to be able to find Bush's military record or did not want to find them. What about the memo from Niger that was an obvious forgery and helped promote their argument to go to war. I found it on the internet but the press didn't seem interested enough to even apparently look for that crutial piece of information. They helped as much as any faction to get us into Iraq and should be ashamed of their obviously, intentional negligence.