Having a Great Time, Wish You Were all Here or Throw the Bitch in the Ditch

 

Having a Great Time, Wish You Were all Here or Throw the Bitch in the Ditch

...a message from Cindy Sheehan

Camp Casey Thanksgiving, Crawford, Texas

I was feeling very down when I was flying to Waco yesterday. I did a lot of crying and missing Casey on the way out from Sacramento. I am not at the place in my grieving yet where I can look at all of our good times and feel grateful for them. Remembering many, many happy Thanksgivings past only made me feel worse, not better.

So, I called my sister (one of the Crawford 12 jailbirds) when I was on a short layover in Dallas to ask her who was picking me up. She wouldn't give me a straight answer saying that "don't worry, someone will be there." So I told her not to worry about it, I would take a taxi to the Peace House or rent a car. I was DEFINITELY feeling sorry for my poor little self.

Well, after the very short flight from Dallas to Waco, and after a luggage misunderstanding on the tarmac, I walked into the terminal in Waco. Lo and behold, there were dozens of people there to welcome me and lots of press. Most of the people (including the press) were old Camp Casey friends and my spirits lifted and I felt strangely at home.

After a stop at the Peace House we headed back out to Camp Casey on the Camp Casey II location. Now I did feel at home. We stayed up for hours talking about politics, the war, old times, and the future. We laughed and cried and I thought: "I am so lucky to have two families. My children and mi familia de Corazon: (my family of the heart).

Both of my families are very close and loving and we laugh and have good times, but our good times are hampered by the fact that we are here for dead serious reasons: we want to hold a President and his lying administration accountable for leading us to disaster in Iraq and we want to stop an immoral occupation. Some of us are also there because we have been so intimately and tragically affected by the disaster and immorality. We periodically stop to reflect on these things.

When I am here in Crawford at Camp Casey, I almost feel sorry for George up there a couple of miles away from us in his protected Green Zone. He is protected from physical harm (which he need not fear from us) and he is protected from political harm. He doesn't have to face people who disagree vehemently with his policies and who oppose his continued killing with every fiber of our beings. He is protected from the real world of pain and need. He has never had to face his failures or own up to anything. Really, are any of us surprised that he has been such a miserable failure in every way?

The reason I feel sorry for him though, is that he is also sitting in his political Green Zone with apparently not many friends or confidants. Reports show that he only has four people who he can talk to. He is not even on friendly terms with his father, Karl or Dick. We at Camp Casey, on the other hand, are surrounded by laughter, love, hope and acceptance. One can't help smiling just being here.

I received an email today that had this subject line: "Throw the Bitch in the Ditch." The writer accused me of "throwing dirt" on Casey, himself and his son who all have served the country. I have NEVER said anything to disparage the honorable service of Casey or the others who have signed up to be in the military, only to be abused by the leadership of this country. This writer didn't even blink an eye at calling the mother of a war hero "bitch." I wonder how the email writer feels about his own leadership "throwing dirt" on the service of actual military men like: John Kerry; Jack Murtha; Max Cleland, and yes, even John McCain? I have never questioned people who try to stay alive fighting in the dishonorable wars of the old men. Who I appreciate even more, though, are the people of courage who resist killing innocent people and become conscientious objectors. I wish Casey had. I am hoping that would have happened. He told everyone before he left for Iraq that he didn't think he could "kill anyone."

Today we dedicated the Casey Sheehan Memorial Peace Gardens at the Crawford Peace house and we unveiled the memorial stone. It was a very poignant and moving event. Tomorrow we are having a rally here at Camp Casey, everyone is invited. There is great info at the Crawford Peace House website or www.MichaelMoore.com.

We are again going to be sad to leave on Sunday, but if George is still defiling the White House and if the war is still raging, we will be back for Easter.

Someone has to make George face his failures and change his ways. We in the Camp Casey Peace movement are dedicated to that mission. But more importantly we are dedicated to the mission of honoring our fallen heroes by bringing their buddies home alive.

We will keep pressing; we will not give up; we will stay the course; we will prevail.

   

War protester Bob Oehmen plays a Native American flute by a makeshift memorial for the American troops that have died in Iraq after a war protest near President Bush's ranch, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005, in Crawford, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)  

   

 Travis Jay Grigg's father, Barney Grigg, center, touches the American flag that had just draped his son's casket Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005, at the Highland Cemetery outside Inola, Okla. Army Pfc. Grigg, 24, was killed Nov. 15 by a roadside bomb in Taji, Iraq. (AP Photo/Tulsa World, Robert S. Cross)  

   

Anti-war activist Melissa Garner strings the names of soldiers who died in Iraq written on small tags during a gathering near U.S. President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, November 26, 2005. A group of activists have set up near the ranch to call on Bush to pull the troops out of Iraq immediately. REUTERS/Jim Young  

 

 U.S. Marine humvees travel down the highway toward the Syrian border in Qaim, 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 25, 2005. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

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Report: 9/11-Iraq link refuted days after attack

Magazine says administration refused to give key docs to Senate committee

MSNBC

Ten days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush was advised that U.S. intelligence found no credible connection linking the attacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein, or evidence suggesting linkage between Saddam and the al-Qaida terrorist network, according to a published report.

The report, published Tuesday in The National Journal, cites government records, as well as present and former officials with knowledge of the issue. The information in the story, written by National Journal contributor Murray Waas, points to an abiding administration concern for secrecy that extended to keeping information from the Senate committee charged with investigating the matter.

In one of the Journal report's more compelling disclosures, Saddam is said to have viewed al-Qaida as a threat, rather than a potential ally.

Presidential brief
The president's daily brief, or PDB, for Sept. 21, 2001, was prepared at the request of President Bush, the Journal reported, who was said to be eager to determine whether any linkage between the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraqi regime existed.

And a considerable amount of the Sept. 21 PDB found its way into a longer, more detailed Central Intelligence Agency assessment of the likelihood of an al-Qaida-Iraq connection.

The Journal story reports that that assessment was released to Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other senior policy-makers in the Bush administration.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested from the White House the detailed CIA assessment, as well as the Sept. 21 PDB and several other PDBs, as part of the committee's continuing inquiry into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the months before the start of the war with Iraq in March 2003.

The Bush administration has refused to surrender these documents.

“Indeed,” the Journal story reported, citing congressional sources, “the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004.”

Long-alleged connection
After Sept. 11, the administration insisted that a connection existed between Iraq and al-Qaida. President Bush, in an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, said the United States had “learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and gas.”

And Vice President Cheney, in a September 2003 appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” alleged there was “a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s.”

But the National Journal report said that the few believable reports of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida “involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group.”

Saddam considered al-Qaida “as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime,” the Journal reported. “At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks” of al-Qaida with Iraqi intelligence operatives as a way to get more information about how the organization worked, the Journal said.

Journal: Little has changed
The Journal story asserts that little has changed to refute the initial absence of information linking Saddam and the al-Qaida network.

“In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed” between Iraq and al-Qaida, the Journal reported.

Reporter Waas quotes one former administration official, whose assessment is a problematic contradiction of the administration’s longstanding assertions:

“What the President was told on September 21 was consistent with everything he has been told since — that the evidence was just not there.”