Let's hope there will not be one next year and these people can rest

So many have suffered. So much suffering happening. So many more to suffer. When will it come knocking at your door?

View the movie: t r u t h o u t - Fort Bragg | A Film by Chris Hume

You will not see this on your TV.

 

Enjoy your moments!!!

A family Missing Casey

MISSING CASEY
When a soldier dies, nothing back home is ever the same
- Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, March 20, 2005

The family Spc. Casey Sheehan left behind reminds us that war creates intensely human consequences. Sometimes we become numb to the pain.

For two years now, a new vocabulary has invaded the nightly news shows. We hear the words so often they aren't so jarring anymore. "Another four U.S. soldiers ..." "Two more Marines ..." There's really no need to complete the sentences. They end the same way: "... died in Iraq."

Some nights, the stock market, traffic tie-ups, even the weather get more attention than American casualties in Iraq. Is it war fatigue that diminishes the impact of this death count? The total is now 1,519. On average, two U.S. service members a day have died since the Iraq war began two years ago this weekend.

Numbers are inadequate in any case. Without a name, without a face, without a personal history, the lives of these fallen men and women are anonymous. The same is true for the estimated 16,000 Iraqi civilians who have died since the war's start on March 20, 2003 (Iraq time).

In the streets of Baghdad, in the corridors of Washington where pundits and politicians meet for conversation, there's still no agreement on whether the conflict has been worth it. The question is academic for most people, including politicians. For those who've lost a family member in Iraq, it's almost cruel. Some of them respond, "yes, the war was necessary," and some say, "no, it wasn't," but they all feel the pain of personal loss.

Reminders are everywhere. Sometimes, people in Vacaville walk up to Casey Sheehan's family and ask how he's doing. They haven't seen Casey in a while --

some of them aren't even aware he joined the Army -- and they want to know if he still lives in town, still enjoys acting, is still religious.

It's always an awkward moment. The family explains that Casey was recruited to join the U.S. Army before the Sept. 11 attacks. They explain that Casey was convinced that while in uniform he could help people, that Casey wanted to be a chaplain's assistant and perhaps make a career out of the Army.

The family then must say that on April 4, 2004, Casey was killed in a Baghdad slum. He died in an ambush while trying to rescue other soldiers who were under attack. Seven other soldiers perished with Casey that day. The newscasts made passing note of their deaths.

Casey was 24. He's survived by his mother, Cindy; his father, Pat; his younger brother, Andy; and younger sisters, Carly and Jane. Each has reacted differently to Casey's death. Together, they are indicative of the human burden that countries exact when they go to war. More than the monuments that get erected, it's the actions of those left behind and the feelings they carry inside that testify to a war's lasting influence.

CINDY SHEEHAN

In the years before April 4, Cindy Sheehan's life revolved around her family and a series of full-time jobs, including one as a youth minister at a Vacaville church. Three months after Casey's death, Cindy Sheehan, 47, became a full-time antiwar activist. She travels around the country to speak, letting others know there are military families who believe the Iraq war was a mistake.

The group Sheehan founded in January, Gold Star Families for Peace, has members across the United States. Sheehan is its best-known face because of her many appearances at demonstrations and because of TV ads broadcast during last year's presidential campaign.

In one ad, Sheehan spoke directly to President Bush, saying about Casey, "He died in his best friend's arms in Iraq. I imagined it would hurt if one of my kids was killed, but I never thought it would hurt this bad. Especially someone so honest and brave as Casey, my son, when you haven't been honest with us, Mr. Bush. When you and your advisers rushed us into this war. How do you think we felt when we heard the Senate report that said there was no link between Iraq and 9/11?"

Sheehan cried in the ad, just as she cries today when she speaks about her elder son. She takes his picture wherever she goes. She carried it to Washington in January when she tried to meet with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Security guards prevented her and other members of Gold Star Families for Peace from entering the doors of the Pentagon.

She met Bush once, during his visit to Fort Lewis, Wash. She says she tried to show the president photos of Casey, but he wouldn't look at them. She says she asked him, "Mr. President, what did my son die for?" and he said, "I believe every person deserves to be free."

She says Casey's death is "compelling me to fight for peace. ... This is what gets me out of bed in the morning -- that and my other three kids."

PAT SHEEHAN

Casey's dad is a sales representative whose territory is Northern California and Northern Nevada. Pat Sheehan, 51, says his son's death changed the way he deals with people. Before April 4, Pat Sheehan would never talk to clients about issues like Iraq.

"Before, I didn't ever bring politics into the equation during my work," he says. "I learned early on not to discusspolitics or religion with business associates, but I've become more outspoken and a little more stubborn about the way I feel, even though it's important to be professional in my business. I think it's important to let people know the truth. I'm still very cautious, but I'm quicker to speak out than I was before."

Pat couldn't bear having Casey's things at home, so he rented a storage locker. Visiting it, as he did recently to retrieve Casey's uniform, is exceptionally difficult for him.

To help him cope with his loss, Pat Sheehan bought a 1969 VW Bug convertible last month. He says working on the car takes his mind off Casey's death and the political issues he is focused on. "Andy and I work on it together," says Pat. "Casey used to help me a bit with other cars."

ANDY SHEEHAN

Pat and Cindy Sheehan's only surviving son moved back home after his brother died. He works as a surveyor apprentice, a job he started just three months after Casey's death.

In his room, Andy has posters that once belonged to his brother, including one featuring cheerleaders from Texas, where Casey was stationed before going to Iraq. Andy, who is 21, was always close to his brother, who was four years older. Every day, Andy wears a spare set of Casey's military dog tags.

"We were inseparable before he left for the military," Andy says. "We did everything together, just like brothers."

Two months after Casey's death, Andy had a large tattoo created on his back. It features a cross, a rose, and a band that reads "79-04" -- the years of Casey's birth and death.

"I have three other tattoos. It seemed like a good idea to get one in memory of him," Andy says.

Casey's death has prompted changes in Andy. "I'm not saying (Casey's death) benefited me, but it made me more of a man," Andy says. "I just felt I should be closer to my sisters and be more of a big brother now that we've lost our big brother."

CARLY SHEEHAN

Carly, 24, works as a waitress at a local restaurant and goes to Solano Community College. Shewrote a poem about her brother's death:

Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done.

They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one,

but have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies.

The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs.

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave,

but I believe he died because they had oil to save.

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?

The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep,

but if we the people let them continue, another mother will weep.

Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?

She says the pain of Casey's death has eased a bit in the past few months, but "Every once in a while, I'll just be doing normal things and, all of a sudden, I feel like I get smacked in the face or punched in the gut. I'll think, 'Oh my God, my brother is dead.' It's hard."

JANE SHEEHAN

The youngest of Casey's siblings, Jane Sheehan, is 19. She has a hard time talking about her brother's death, and she didn't want to speak for this article. She was certainly in Casey's thoughts during his brief time in Iraq. In a letter Casey wrote on March 31 (but never mailed home -- commanders found it after his death), Casey wrote, "How is everyonedoing? I wish I could be home for Jane's graduation."

The letter is difficult to read. In it, Casey reassures his family that he should be safe, that "we should be looking at a pretty smooth year. The unit we're replacing had only two deaths during their time here."

Four days later, Casey was dead. It has been almost a year now. The anniversary is coming up in two weeks.

To mark the second anniversary of the war, Cindy Sheehan was scheduled to be in Fayetteville, N.C., speaking at an antiwar rally in a city that's home to Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base.

Fayetteville is a long way from Vacaville and a long way from Iraq. Cindy Sheehan says she and her family will go as far as it takes to keep Casey's memory alive.

Casey's last letters home

These letters to Casey Sheehan's family were never sent. Military personnel gave them to the family after his death.

March 13-14, 2004

"The Beginning"

It was a long ordeal starting out at 1100 Saturday morning. We arrived at the back dock to find out we weren't leaving until 2:30 that afternoon. And so began a lot of waiting around. The married soldiers had their families to see them off, and all I had was a call home the night before. Mom cried her eyes out over the phone, not the first time it happened either.

From the back dock we loaded onto a bus that took us to the iron horse gym, where we did some more waiting and the families had one more chance to say good bye. From there we took another bus to Abrams gym, where we actually did some manifest processing for the flight.

They had a nice setup for us, too. Phones, Internet, video games, food, free stuff and music were all provided prior to the next bus ride to the plane. At 6:30 p.m. Saturday, they formed us up and herded us onto the bus for the plane.

As we loaded the plane, the flight attendants proceeded to tell us we were making a stop in Ireland before we got to Kuwait. Unfortunately for us, we have to stay on the plane while the crew changes and the plane is refueled.We will be landing in Ireland shortly, then on to Kuwait.

We stayed in Ireland for about 4 hours. While we were here, there was also a National Guard unit from Sacramento. I spoke with the sergeant major of that unit and let him know I was from Vacaville.

I also spoke with one of the airport employees. She told me about the country and the different things to do. She also informed me that my family name is well known here. Shortly after that, we boarded the plane for Kuwait which we were informed will take 6 hours and 4 minutes to get there..

March 31, 2004

Hey Family:

I've finally made to Iraq. Luckily for us, there was no threat to our convoy.

How is everyone doing? I wish I could be home for Jane's graduation.

We should be looking at a pretty smooth year. The unit we are replacing had only two deaths during its time here. Anyway, I didn't think Mom needed to know that. She's already too worried about me being here.

I'm glad I finally got to write. They didn't give us the address until we got to our camp. I'm also glad I got to talk to Mom for a bit about a week ago. She probably doesn't remember because I woke her up.

I had an interesting flight. We flew from Fort Hood to Ireland. We had had 3 1/2-hour layover there. I spent $1.30 for a coke out of a soda machine and got 70 cents back in Eurocoins. I got to speak to one of the employees at the airport. She told me about the country and said that our last name is very well known.

After Ireland we landed in Kuwait ...

E-mail Jonathan Curiel at jcuriel@sfchronicle.com.

Will the Children ever forgive? They suffer the most....

March 14th, 2005 3:30 pm
Children of the Fallen

Over 1,000 American kids have lost a parent in the Iraq war. Who they are, and how they're coping

This story was written by Jerry Adler with reporting from Debra Rosenberg, T. Trent Gegax, Pat Wingert, Daren Briscoe, Hilary Shenfeld, Kiyoshi Martinez, Dirk Johnson, Jamie Reno and Andrew Horesh / Newsweek

They were prepared to die, even the truck drivers and supply clerks; any American who sets foot in Iraq must be. They made out wills, as the military requires, and left behind letters and videos for their families. The families in turn prepared for the day when they might open the door to find a chaplain on the other side. In military families the notion of duty is not confined to the battlefield. On the morning that 14-year-old Rohan Osbourne learned that his mother, Pamela, had been killed in a mortar attack on her Army base, his father dropped him off as usual at Robert M. Shoemaker High School, where three quarters of the students are the children of soldiers from nearby Fort Hood, Texas. "I might not get a lot of work done today, ma'am," Rohan politely explained to his teacher. "My mommy died yesterday in Iraq."

War notoriously robs parents of their sons, but it also steals husbands and fathers, and increasingly wives and mothers. The Pentagon doesn't keep these statistics, but using figures compiled by the Scripps-Howard News Service and other sources, NEWSWEEK has calculated that as of last week 1,043 American children had lost a parent in Iraq. To put it another way, nearly two years after the invasion on March 19, 2003, among the 1,508 American troops who have died as of March 11 were an estimated 450 fathers, and 7 mothers. A wartime death presents unique hardships for children. It occurs in a far-off country, often to a parent who left home months earlier; young children may find it hard to grasp the finality of the event. Offsetting that is the impressive panoply and ritual of a military funeral, and the consoling knowledge that the sacrifice was in a worthy cause. The death of a parent often leaves a family not just sadder, but poorer, and surviving spouses are agitating for improvements in their benefits. But there are needs no government program can fill.

The fathers were big strong men, like Nino Livaudais, a 23-year-old Army Ranger with two tours in Afghanistan behind him before the invasion. His son Destre, now 7, is still struggling to understand how such a hero could have been killed by a mere bomb. "I can kind of picture it," he says hesitantly. "But it's hard to picture it. I don't really think explosions hurt that much. My dad's usually a tough man. He went through about five wars." Livaudais left, besides Destre (then 5) and his wife, Jackie, a 2-year-old son, Carson, and Grant, who was born after his death. As relatives gathered on the family porch after Nino's funeral, Carson grew excited by all the unexpected company and started calling for his daddy to join the party. He then turned around, puzzled, as the grown-ups all burst into tears.

And their mothers were loving and devoted, like Spc. Jessica Cawvey, 21. Before she left for Iraq last February with her Illinois National Guard unit, her daughter, Sierra, made her pinkie-swear she wouldn't die. So when Cawvey was killed by a roadside bomb in Fallujah last October, it was not merely a tragedy for Sierra, it was a kind of betrayal. "We had to explain that even though she died, it wasn't her mommy's fault," said Kevin Cawvey, Sierra's grandfather. Vanessa Arroyave, who was 6 when her father, Marine S/Sgt. Jimmy Javier Arroyave, was deployed, was certain he would die in Iraq. "She was very adamant about that," says her mother, Rachelle. The little girl was right. Last April, when Arroyave was killed in a truck accident, Vanessa told her mother: "I told you so." So Rachelle faced the mirror image of the Cawvey family's problem. She had to reassure her daughter that by predicting her father's death, she hadn't brought it about.

The sudden onslaughts of grief are sometimes almost more than Nelda Howton, the principal of Osbourne's school near Fort Hood, can bear. She has picked up the phone to find a mother sobbing on the other end, begging Howton to drive her son home. One girl's aunt walked straight to the classroom and appeared in the doorway, tears streaming down her face. The students do characteristically thoughtless things, like asking Jessica Blankenbecler for her autograph because they had seen her on television. Blankenbecler, a pretty sophomore, was the first student at Shoemaker to lose a parent in Iraq. That wasn't the worst of it; one girl told her, "I wish something would happen to my dad because then we'd get rich"—a remark that carried a particular sting because Blankenbecler's mother, Linnie, thinks they're actually going to be poor.

Compensation for the families of soldiers killed in action is a politically and emotionally charged issue, particularly in light of the changing makeup of the military. The saying used to be that "if the Army wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one," but the proportion of married soldiers is higher today than in any previous war, says Charlie Moskos, a Northwestern University sociologist. The military today is a better-paid career than most high-school graduates could aspire to otherwise, which may explain why the average male soldier now gets married at 24—three years younger than the rest of the population. The heavy reliance on Reserves and National Guard troops also puts family men and women on the front lines in unprecedented numbers. Of the Americans killed in Iraq through the end of November 2004, more than two in five were married.

Characteristically, the military and Congress have responded to the urgent needs of the survivors by adding new layers of bureaucracy to a system that dates back to the Civil War (and, in fact, is still paying benefits to five offspring of Civil War veterans). Spouses receive a lump-sum "death gratuity" of $12,420, plus life insurance of as much as $250,000. This payment would be effectively doubled by a bill that is expected to pass in the next month. Families are eligible for Social Security payments and for two different kinds of government annuities, although the fine print requires an offsetting reduction in one if you also collect the other. Survivors are eligible for generous college-tuition grants and lifetime subsidized health care. As an illustration, the National Military Families Association calculated the benefits for the family (a wife and children ages 1 and 3) of an enlisted man with a salary of $38,064 a year, including a housing allowance and combat pay. Apart from the lump-sum payments, his wife would receive the equivalent of an annual income of $57,624, falling to $45,804 after two years, then declining in steps as the children reach adulthood. By the time the younger child turns 23, the wife's check would amount to only about a quarter of her husband's active-duty salary.

Last year the Department of Veterans Affairs added bereavement counseling to the package of benefits. This supplements the work of a voluntary organization called TAPS—Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors—which organizes "emotional peer-to-peer" counseling among kids. There are also freelance outreach efforts by the adult children of servicemen killed in Vietnam, who are now approaching middle age themselves. Tony Cordero, who was 4 when his father, William, was killed in 1965, founded a survivors' group called Sons and Daughters in Touch, which has begun inviting the children of Iraqi casualties to its Father's Day memorials. Ever since the publication of her family memoir ("Hero Mama"), the writer Karen Spears Zacharias, whose father was killed in Vietnam, has become a magnet for bereaved kids, who write and call her at all hours. In quiet visits, she tells them she understands how they feel: "It's difficult to lose a father in an unpopular war."

Psychologists have learned a lot about how to help children through the grief process. Unfortunately one of the most important recommendations—to avoid unnecessary changes to the child's daily routine—is impossible for many military families, who generally have to move off base within six months. Previous advice that a healthy adjustment required a clean break with the deceased parent is now inoperative; current thinking is that children "want and need a continuing bond to their dead parent," according to J. William Worden, co-director of Harvard's Child Bereavement Study. "They talk to them, they keep things that belong to them, they dream about them and think about them," he says. Tony Bertolino Jr., 15, appears to have memorized the entire career and duties of his father, an Army sergeant who was killed in an ambush in late 2003. "He was a highly respected soldier and man," he says. David Kirchhoff Jr., whose father, an Iowa guardsman, died of heat stroke in Iraq in 2003, has turned his bedroom into a virtual shrine to his father, including a wall of photographs. Like many sons of soldiers, he imagines enlisting himself someday. His plan, though, is to "go over there and tell everybody it's notworth it." Compared with the 20,000 American children who lost a father in Vietnam, the families of Iraqi war casualties have the advantage that almost all of them are getting a body back. Many men back then were lost in the jungle or the air and were—or still are—listed as "missing," leaving their families to wonder, "Is he going to be coming around the corner one day?" says Cordero. It was with that in mind that Tina Cline, whose husband, Marine Lance Cpl. Donald Cline, was killed in an explosion on the fourth day of the invasion, decided to let 2-year-old Dakota look inside the flag-draped coffin at the uniformed body inside. The body had no head.

"Daddy's not coming home," she whispered to her son, who was dressed in a tiny dark suit and tie. "He's got a bigger job to do, helping God in heaven."

Parents have always said that, to little boys who stood at attention and promised their moms they would be brave. They wore their father's dog tags to school, and, in the way of things, eventually went off to fight in their own wars. On the same day that Cline's vehicle was hit by a shell, Marine Sgt. Phillip Jordan was killed in Nasiriya, leaving behind a 6-year-old son, Tyler, whom he called "Lavabug." For a week after, Tyler sulked around the house in his 6-foot-3-inch father's camouflage shirt, refusing to eat or to talk to his mother, Amanda.

"God needed Daddy in heaven," she explained recently.

"Well," he replied, "I needed him, too."

I've always said the exit polls didn't lie.

We must fix our voting system.

Last week in South Florida we all voted on slot machines. Miami-Dade county voted it down. Broward County voted for machines. 24 hours later Gov. Bush announced it didn't matter what we voted for, it wasn't going to happen. Along with the bullet train we voted to have and smaller class room sizes.  We vote for it and we don't get what we vote for.

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2005/1086     Bob Fitrakis

The sun revolves around the Earth and George W. Bush won the election in Ohio
March 8, 2005

The Bush family and friends stole both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. The covert operations long associated with George Herbert Walker Bush, former President and CIA director, are now overtly practiced in key battleground states.

The mainstream media is much like medieval theologians, who refused to accept the obvious, that the Earth revolved around the sun. Instead, they plotted bizarre planet rotations to prove the Earth was the center of the universe.

In order to believe that Bush won in Ohio, you have to ignore deadly accurate exit polls and all observable data to avoid the Bush family theft. By refusing to consider this CIA-connected family’s history, one must accept the following ridiculous political conclusions: that Bush supporters were shy in Ohio and Florida and reluctant to answer exit poll questions, but not shy in Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana; that pollster Zogby’s Election Day calls for Kerry in Ohio and Florida were wrong, as well as the Harris poll; that Mitofsky’s exit polling is flawed in the U.S. but an accurate predictor in the Ukraine for fraud; that Kerry easily carried the metropolitan areas of Cleveland and Columbus but lost due to an unobserved Bush surge in rural Appalachia; that Bush won despite an incumbent approval rating under 50%; that Bush got 80% or so of the undecided vote although all professional pollsters agree that undecideds generally vote for the challenger; and private partisan companies that secretly count the vote without paper trails are fair and honestly doing their job.

Equally important as the implausible scenarios one must accept, is the real life Bush family history one must ignore. One must turn away from three generations of Bush ties to the security intelligence complex and the CIA. When George H.W. Bush took over the CIA in the mid-1970s, critics across the political spectrum warned that Bush would politicize the agency for his own political aspirations. Roland Evans and Robert Novak, writing in the Washington Post, reported that some in the CIA were objecting “against any presidential scenario that looks to the CIA as a possible stepping-stone to the Vice Presidential nomination.”

Kevin Phillips, in American Dynasty, details how covert CIA operatives fired by Jimmy Carter’s CIA director Stansfield Turner, “joined the 1980 Bush campaign.” The Washington Post noted, “Simply put, no presidential campaign in recent memory – perhaps ever, has attracted so much support from the intelligence as the campaign of former CIA director George Bush.” Bush and his ex-CIA buddies secured the Vice Presidency in 1980, the Presidency in 1988 and have now rigged the 2000 and 2004 elections for Bush the Lesser.

To believe in W’s victory in 2004, you also have to forget the following historical facts: that in 1942, Prescott Bush, the current President’s grandfather, was called Hitler’s Angel by the New York Tribune; that in 1946, the OSS/CIA overthrew the Metakas government in Greece; that the U.S. gave at least $60 million to bring to power the former Nazi intelligence network of General Reinhard Gehlen in the first decade following World War II to control the intelligence apparatus in West Germany; that in 1953, the U.S. overthrew the popular Mossadegh in Iran and installed the brutal Shah; that in 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Arbenz government in Guatemala; that in 1957, the CIA financed the election of pro-American candidates to the Lebanese Parliament; that in 1964, the CIA gave $20 million in assistance for Eduardo Frei to defeat Salvador Allende in Chile; that in 1967, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected government of George Papandreou and installed a military dictatorship; that in 1973, the CIA overthrew the second oldest democracy in the western hemisphere in Chile; that in 1975, the CIA destabilized and forced the dissolution of the Labor government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in Australia; that in 1976, the CIA attempted to overthrow Michael Manley’s government in Jamaica.

The veterans of these covert operations established the first Bush Presidency. They also brought us Iran-Contra.

Under the Reagan-Bush administraton, mainframe computers were used to rig the election for Noriega supporters to be elected to the Panama Parliament and pre-programmed computer tapes were brought in to the government’s central tabulating center in a last ditch effort to prop up Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in a “demonstration election.”

Even in the last election in the Ukraine, the Associated Press reports “the Bush administration has spent more than $65 million the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine….” And the Bush family’s candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who won on a re-vote because the Mitofsky exit polls detected fraud, is married to Kateryna Chumachanko, a former Reagan White House official and daughter of right-wing Ukrainian exiles. Chumachanko was accused of being a CIA operative by her husband’s political opponents, according to the Washington Post.

Do we simply ignore all the signs of election theft in the U.S. and accept the bizarre axiom that the universal laws of statistics that reveal fraud in the Ukraine somehow stop at the United States border?

--
Bob Fitrakis is Editor of the Free Press (http://freepress.org) and was on the legal team that filed Moss v. Bush and Moss v. Moyer to challenge the election results in Ohio.

It is no longer we the people who decide in our country

Peaceful Warrior's Unite

March 4th, 2005 9:19 pm
"Empty Boots" --by Cindy Sheehan

LeeRockwell.com

"I’m so glad George Bush is a uniter and not a divider," I sarcastically thought to myself as the retired Marine Vietnam vet was screaming at me and the other volunteers at the Eyes Wide Open Exhibit (presented by the American Friend’s Service Committee – AFSC) in Dallas today.

The man was beside himself with fury. He accused me and the AFSC of being shameful and that the AFSC wanted to see all of our soldiers in Iraq "tried for war crimes." I just sat at the hospitality table trying to let the veteran blow off some steam – I couldn’t answer his concerns at that point anyway – I felt his accusations were for the representatives of the AFSC.

The very, very angry man finally screamed one thing that I couldn’t ignore. He was practically frothing at the mouth when he roared: "You people are all cowards. You wouldn’t die for anything."

That’s when I had had just about enough of Mr. Marine. I stood up to him and I said: "You are wrong about that, sir. I would have gladly gone to Iraq instead of my son. I would have died in his place without question."

This simple but true statement, which any parent would make, took the wind out of Mr. Marine’s sails. He got tears in his eyes and he said: "I’m so sorry for your loss, ma’am. I would have taken your son’s place, too." Then we hugged each other and both of us cried...me for my devastating loss...and I’m not sure what the Veteran gentleman was crying for. My loss…or the losses he experienced as a soldier in Vietnam? Maybe a little of both.

At that miraculous and rare point in time, a Blue State, peace activist mom and a Red state, Bush/War supporting veteran, found common ground. It was a very unusual and sacred moment. We were able to open up an honest dialogue, which is so rare in this country these days.

There were about 50 protesters out today at the Eyes Wide Open Exhibit. They were there because they were under the mistaken impression that the AFSC wants all soldiers serving in Iraq prosecuted for war crimes. That would make me mad, also: if it were true. Most of our children in harm’s way are just trying to save their lives and the lives of their buddies. But this notion about the AFSC is totally absurd and false. How did these otherwise, seemingly intelligent protestors get such a whacky idea?? Well, the protesters were told that this was true by a hate-mongering radio talk show host named Darell Ankarlo. He told his listeners: "Eyes Wide Open is in actuality anti-war/anti-American/anti-troops display suggesting that our military 'be brought to justice' for crimes against humanity." Ankarlo also told his listeners that this statement was on the AFSC website.

Of course, this is not on the AFSC website. But don’t take my word for it. Do something that Ankarlo’s listeners did not: check it out yourself. It’s amazing to me that the protesters would come out and waste hours of their time on a beautiful Dallas morning to protest something that they didn’t even verify.

Like I said in my speech at the Eyes Wide Open Exhibit today: "Whether one thinks this war is moral or immoral, we all agree that the 1496 young people represented in their empty boots behind me, are brave and honorable people who deserve the highest of honors and our highest respect."

I have been all over the country protesting this war and trying to expose the reasons for going to Iraq and staying in Iraq for what they were and still are: lies. My experience in Dallas has convinced me of a certain fact: standing across from our philosophical opponents and screaming slogans at each other is not very productive. Having knee-jerk reactions to hate mongering talk show hosts is also very counter-productive. I think we as Americans have more in common with each other than not and we need to find that common ground…quickly. We need to join together to stop the next war before it even begins this time.

Exhibits like AFSC's Eyes Wide Open is a wonderful way to honor our children's sacrifices and to bring an awareness of the true human cost of war to our nation. Click on the link to the AFSC website and you can view a short movie on the exhibit, see the list of scheduled upcoming cities where Eyes Wide Open will be, and sign a petition for peace.

(Repeated calls and e-mails to Darrell Ankarlo’s station [KLIF AM] in Dallas from members of Gold Star Families for Peace [GSFP] have not been returned. We are demanding that Ankarlo apologize to the AFSC and to GSFP for lying to his listeners.)

March 4, 2005

Cindy Sheehan [send her mail] is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04 She is co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace.