Matt Drudge began the lies and half-truth attacks on the mother of a dead Iraq war vet by taking statements out of context from a newspaper article written about Cindy Sheehan's 2004 visit with GWB.
http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2005/08/08/20050808_141400_flash4.htm
The original article contains statements damning Bush's handling of the war and his ever-shifting reasons for being there:
http://www.thereporter.com/republished/ci_2923921
This administration has no shame - and Bush has no courage in refusing to meet with this woman and answer her questions. She's earned the right to ask them - the longer he avoids this unpleasant confrontation the more he reveals himself as the empty shell he is.
"the longer he avoids this unpleasant confrontation the more he reveals himself as the empty shell he is."
AMEN ! ! ! !
ps. - and that from an Atheist 
you know they'll SPIN it
how long 'til we see the SwiftBoatDicksAgainstMomsForPeace.com ???
he already met with her last year....you guys just spin and spin and you accuse the republicans of this? HA!
She is using her son's death to capture her personal agenda...what a horrific way to mar his memory. Some people have no shame!!!
Here's another article detailing the shameful way the right has lied about her earlier meeting with Bush - a meeting she has never denied.
Kinda just like the way the Schindlers, Jeb & George Bush, Bill Frist, and the entire right wing conservative pro-life-unlesstheyareanabortiondoctorinwhichcasewebombethemandtheirclinic used the tragedy of Terry Schiavo to capture their personal agenda.
Or was that different somehow?
him in the process.
There is enough spin going on on BOTH SIDES!
BK
She has every right to ask these questions -- she paid with her son.
"Family members of Cindy Sheehan, the Vacaville woman camped near President Bush's ranch protesting the war in Iraq, denounced her actions Thursday in an e-mail quickly distributed worldwide by Internet and mainstream media.
Sent to a San Francisco radio station Thursday, the first public acknowledgement of a family rift came from
Cherie Quartarolo, sister-in-law to Cindy Sheehan and godmother to her son, Casey, who was killed in action in Iraq last year.
Reached by phone Thursday, Quartarolo said she consulted with other family members before releasing the brief statement, but she declined to elaborate. She signed the memo on behalf of Casey's paternal grandparents, as well as "aunts, uncles and numerous cousins."
Noting that her family is still grieving the loss of Casey, Quartarolo wrote: "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 expense of her son's good name and reputation."
Seems to me that the real culprit in all this is the media sensationalization and hype.
The major networks are lapping up her side of the story, but they've ignored the other side.
care about the sons and daughters of BUSHHATERS. The remainder of the family, well, what do they know, eh?
eom
your narrow minded perspective.
Then again, I expected nothing more from you.
In your blind hatred for Bush, and you desire to find anything to attack him with, you tied to divert the issue. All I pointed out was that everyone is ignoring the fact that the rest of her family was so upset with her THEY criticized her actions.
However, continue with your childish rants. You have two more years to bitch and whine.
Birdman, the rest of her family can disagree with her all they want to, but the fact is, it was Cindy Sheehan's son who died in Iraq. Not Uncle Cyrus, or Aunt JoBeth, or Cousin Bobby.
The fact their criticisms of Sheehan were reported, is not news. The fact their printed comments sounded like they came right off the desk of Karl Rove and the GOP Spin Machine seems to escape you and others.
But it doesn't matter what THEY think. It wasn't their child who was sent to and killed in Iraq.
And until and unless you yourself have lost blooded family in the manner of cindy sheehan, you really have no right to criticize her actions.
of the President must be propagandized rhetoric from "the desk of Karl Rove and the GOP Spin Machine"?
And you think that her loss is more significant than the losses suffered by others?
Cut the crap Gonzo, the only reason anyone here is discussing the matter is because the bleeding heart anti-Bush assholes have leeched onto another media circus to promote their anti-admin agenda.
I quoted strictly from the article and I was pointing out the total bullshit attitude that many in this thread have adopted. None of us know this woman or her family. Why her other family members are making the accusation that she's using her son's death for her own agenda is beyond me. I do know that often times the family members know more about the "rest of the story" than is reported.
But, as is typical, we have a great opportunity for the media to sensationalize and promote something that does not portray the president well.
The lame arguments you and others have put forward about how people can't criticize her until they've suffered a comparable loss is also bullshit. Aren't you leftists the ones who scream about the first ammendment and free speech whenevr you're criticized for making anti-admin statements?
Again, *I* didn't call her anything. *I* pointed out that her family made charges and somehow, while extoling her courage and suffering, the opposite viewpoint was being neglected.
Note that the majority of families of Iraq casualties (I said MAJORITY, not ALL) are not camping out in front of the President's ranch, or the White House, nor are they sudden darlings of the media.
I would suspect that their grief is just as great, yet they have chosen to keep it private. It's funny how you guys all jump on any anti-Bush bandwagon, yet conveniently ignore anything-or attack anyone who expresses support or acceptance of him.
I can't say that I'm all that surprised, from the time this board was created, it's really been an anti Republican, anti-conservative, antiBush bashathon for the likes of you and others. Disucussions with you people does not even qualify as mental masturbation, there's no satisfaction to be gained since you are hopeleddly blinded by your hatred and ideologies, and you've proven time and again that you're no better than those you despise.
You're narrowminded and you put forward the viewpoint that anyone who disagrees with you is inferior.
As far as your last comment: "you really have no right to criticize her actions", I have EVERY RIGHT to criticize her actions if I so desire, it's called the First Ammendment.
-- Modified on 8/13/2005 2:27:21 PM
THAT is the point and it is YOU who is trying to divert from the point as usual by talking about something totally irrelevant.
When YOU can speak from the experience of having lost a child in this war is when you will have the credibility to criticize some who has.
Your blind attack on anyone who opposes Bush is worse than my hate of him and is bullshit regime. I supported him all the way up to the Iraq war -- now I despise him and just about everything he has done and has not done since. He is a disaster in countless ways.
Like I said before -- there are none so blind as those who will not see. I am afraid this applies to you.
You can't sell that drivel.
I DID address the point. You are trying to make it a one sided argument and you can't (well you can, since all your Bush hating buddies will support you). However, the point is NOT that she lost her son. The point is that she's now a political activist, using her sons death (or allowing herself and her son's death to be used) for political attacks.
AnNd, as I pointed out to Gonzo, since you apparently need to learn to read, I did not criticize her.
If you actually had any capabilities to comprehend-you would have realized the criticism was aimed squarely at the likes of yourself and the other Sheehan bandwagon riders.
I quoted the article (straight copy & paste)and I included the link to the source. But, as is typical for you especially, you skimmed what I wrote and immediately fell into the classic definition of an assumption-you've made an ass of yourself (which isn't that difficult anymore).
Take YOUR blinders off and expose yourself to the alternatives. You claim you supported Bush until Iraq, but that means nothing.
The bottom line is that you aren't here for political discussion, you're just another SDSTud type who likes to find ways to fault the admin, without contributing anything of substance.
You are so full of crap it is amazing. I asked you a simple question about how many children you've lost in Iraq (which you have not answered) and you turn it into this.
Cindy Sheehan has every right to make this a POLITICAL issue! Of course it's political -- just like your position and my positions and Bush's position and the smear campaign against her! Who cares if relatives disagree with her? Why is this relevant to anything? If anybody has earned the right to speak out and make this a POLITICAL issue it is people like her!
I find your propagation of the smear tactics of this good woman to be disgusting and about as low as a person can get. I am sure you are proud of yourself.
By the way over 100 other families who have lost children in Iraq are there with her as well -- you condemn them too? These people spilled THEIR families blood for your dirty little war! Congratulations.
You talk a big game, but why isn’t your butt over in Iraq fighting this war if you love it so much? Or is it you just want OTHER people to fight and die in your filthy, dishonest war?
Of course I fault this administration -- they have fucked up royally in so many areas. It is you who BLINDLY defends them. Why?
By the way, I have made more money in sales than you can imagine! But I sell honestly and without deception which I have a feeling is not what you do.
Flame away, I don't care. I've said my piece, I'm moving on.
-- Modified on 8/13/2005 10:54:19 PM
You continue to reinforce my expressed beliefs.
You have no point, you have mischaracterized my original post, and when you are called on your bulshit-you try to attack and belittle me.
When I point out your erros, you insult and attack, then claim that you're moving on.
Fine, move on. You concede.
I didn'ta "attack" Sheehan, I just pointed out taht there was more to this story than the tragic, heroine you are trying to portray.
Your views that nobody can have an opinion unless they've lost a child apply equally to YOUR position. How many kids have YOU lost stamina?
You started this, does this mean you have suffered similarly. Or, as I supect, you just are pissed because you're being called on your hypocrisy.
Perhaps I "blindly" support the admin becasue I have gretaer insight than you, perhaps I have contacts you know nothing about. Or perhaps I'm not such a bitter fool like yourself. Then again, there's the possibility that I'm not happy with what's developing, but unlike you, I refuse to condemn based upon what I know are bullshit, biased reports.
Go ahead an move on, continue to spew your hatred for the president and the Republican party. In the end, your opinion, like mine, doesn't mean shit-and that's what really bothers you-the idea that you are an insignificant blot who has no influence and can only spout political rhetoric on a website dedicated to the worlds oldest profession.
Get over it.
You are not combative at all right? You are innocent as can be, huh? You never personally attack anybody on this board, right? You're just a nice, gentle, mild, little pussy cat, aren't you?
What, you can't take a little attack or belittling, huh? Frankly I think you deserved the attack and belittling for spreading that discusting smear of this good woman.
You can call me a leftist, liberal, whatever you want. I voted for Carter 1x, Reagan 1x and Bush I 1x, Clinton 2x, Gore & Kerry. I lean to the left, but I am very conservative on many things -- like gun control, fiscal responsibility, free trade and others, as small a government possible that helps "provide for the common defense and general welfare" of our people. I am pro choice, pro free speach, pro social security (as is), pro helping the poor and have recently come to being pro national health care. If that makes me a "LIBERAL" or "LEFTIST", so be it. I give careful thought to the issues and have for a long, long time. So please don't tell me I am spouting anything "typical" as if I am like all those Ditto-Heads who wait to hear what Rush Limbaugh says before they have an opinion...I am against that kind of closed mindedness -- that is what makes me more LIBERAL than you! That is why I have changed my opinion of this administration since the Afgan war. I am capable of accepting new information and changing my mind. What's your excuse?
What's more, you certainy cannot be serious when you turn my question around, and ask me how many children I have lost. I am not spreading the smear against the woman who has lost children. That was YOU. Did you forget? Partly the reason I am defending her against the smear is precisely BECAUSE I have NOT lost a family member and could not possiby know the grief she is going through and how anyone might react. Therfore I give her the benefit of the doubt and realize the right wing is doing to her, what they've done to everybody who says anything against them. I mean, maybe you can tell me this: why is it that everybody who says anything against this administration is automatically smeard, called treasonous, called politically motvated, called not credible, bla, bla, bla bla? (you know the story)...Every single one of them is not credible, right? Not a single one, right?
I am afraid the Hypocracy is all yours. I fail to see where I am being hypocritical -- maybe you can point it out to me.
-- Modified on 8/14/2005 11:07:46 PM
In her words:
"Still putting out the O'Reilly fires of me being a traitor and using Casey's name dishonorably, my in-laws sent out a press statement disagreeing with me in strong terms; which is totally okay with me, because they barely knew Casey. We have always been on separate sides of the fence politically and I have not spoken to them since the election when they supported the man who is responsible for Casey's death. The thing that matters to me is that our family -- Casey's dad and my other 3 kids are on the same side of the fence that I am."
You're going to determine the 'appropriate' way for this woman to deal with the death of her son?
Her son died for Halliburton - less than nothing. She has every right to her anger.
bullshit.
"""Her son died for Halliburton - less than nothing"""
Are the families who gave sons and daughters who think you're full of shit wrong???
Who are YOU to to deny them their grief when they call you traitor???
Bill, my man, in the USA we have thing thing called Freedom of Speech. go back to our Founding Fathers, you'll find that dissent is very patriotic. You've been listening to too much talk radio and not enough VN pop.
Just understand that your words to tear down Bush are used By OBL to bolster the will of his troops to fight and kill Americans.
Sheehan's their Hanoi Jane.
Or did ya think freedom of Speech was just about mindless lipflappin?
We have freedom of expression in this country - though I haven't noticed any grieving families calling me a traitor, just chickenhawks defending their right to shed other people's blood.
I deny noone's grief, and I support Cindy Sheehan's right to ask questions of GWB to help her come to terms with hers.
Perhaps we should raise money for Cindy to make a contribution to the Republican Party, that way she can have an audience with Bush like his contributors do.
cares about the troops. Follow the party line or your sacrifice is meaningless. I'm sure that many prospective enlistees are seeing how the families are treated after the ultimate sacrifice and are having second thoughts. Now everyone can see that the Republicans have no shame. Bill, I pray that your son or brother is safe tonight in Iraq. They are there, right? Because otherwise your attitude would just be disgusting.
The right has nothing to spin. Going after the mother of a war casualty is about as low as you can go (but I suspect they won't disappoint me in the future).
Let's cut to the chase. Cheney sold the billionaires on that we're running out of oil and the only way to maintain American economic dominance was to secure SW Asia and the Middle East. The rest, including this most unholy Christian Right/Zionist Jew alliance, is all smoke.
Along the way, they took all steps necessary to insure that Bush/Cheney would remain in office, including torquing more than a few ballot boxes accross the land. Kerry probably won the popular vote by 4-6%, won Ohio, and probably NV and NM and absolutely smoked W in FL.
The Dems really have no choice but to go along with this, since the same billionaires, for the most part, finance both sides (whether you like it or not, it's right now Hillary in '08-if martial law hasn't been declared-remember, a dictatorship would be easier for W ).
Anyway, Iraq happened only because when we invaded Afghanistan, we found out that there wasn't as much oil in the Caspian Sea as we thought originally. However, I do note that last year was a record breaking poppy crop for the Afghans.
The disaster that Iraq is is well documented, but we're committed to staying the course as W noted yesterday-as long as the swamp hasn't yet been drained.
Stay tuned. I just have this feeling that some of the non-energy billionaires are very unhappy with the W/Cheney show. Oh yeah, go long on non-oil energy stocks.
I have no intention of getting into this discussion, but "Kerry probably won the popular vote by 4-6%, won Ohio, and probably NV and NM and absolutely smoked W in Fl" is a bit much for me to take. Where do these numbers come from, and have they been documented by any REASONABLE, NON-BIASED source? Personally, I strongly doubt it, because to be true there would have to have been election fraud on a MASSIVE scale for ALL to see, and to say that "the Dems really have no choice but to go along with this" makes no sense whatsoever.
www.blackboxvoting.com
www.blackboxvoting.org
you referred me to. It's a huge website, and if the data is there, why don't you point out to me EXACTLY where it is? I'll stick by my original comment - it's hard to believe your assertions could be true and yet nothing was done about it. Fraud on the scale you suggest is, to me, beyond believe, and nowhere did I read anything suggesting such after the election. Had it been true, the outcry would have been ENORMOUS. I am left with the conclusion, therefore, that it's the figment of someone's imagination! Just my opinion.
Damn. Her son died and she's angry. Perhaps both sides should step-back and go elsewhere.
Yeah, bitch all you want, but two points to remember...
1. She ALREADY had her meeting, and praised GWB after it
2. There are a lot of mothers who have not met with him once, why does she get two shots.
If she and the Dems want to politicize his death, so be it. Perhaps she should take a clue from the rest of her family and show more respect to her departed son.
BTW, her son enlisted while GWB was POTUS. Guess he had faith where his mother lacks it...
don't make the mistake of getting killed in Iraq or the administration and its sycophants will crap all over you. I can't wait for the army to throw that slogan on their next commercial.
do not share your view as they voted HEAVILY for GWB over Kerry. In fact, they tend to vote for GWB to the point where the Dems will try to throw their votes out!!! (i.e 2000)
Please spare us your "concern for their families routine" while you back a party that tries to shit all over thier right to vote
You can throw out that BS statement about the Dems against their right to vote all you want, but "Please spare us your "concern for their families routine" while you back a party that tries to shit all over their right to" live.
"For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents."
you think the War dept runs 100% perfect under ANY administration.
If you want fantasy, go watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...
In the real world, you do the best you can and adjust as needs are identified. You don't see me bitching about how LBJ ran the Vietnam war!!!
BTW, the line about Dems trying to stop military vote from counting is not BS, but in fact undeniable history (you must be soo proud!)
over two years ago. That's not fantasy, that is incompetence by this administration. They were the ones that were in such a hurry for this war.
Secondly, you won't cactch me defending LBJ's foriegn policy any time soon. Oddly, O'Reilly, Rush and Hannity defend it all the time.
Regarding the counting of military votes:
"AMY GOODMAN: The military. How does the military vote?
ADAM COHEN: You have two choices. You can fax to your local elections office, but what the Pentagon has done for your convenience, you soldiers around the world, is they have set up a hotline that you can fax to, which goes to Washington. So, I called the Pentagon and I said, could you explain to me where these non-secret ballots that come in from soldiers go? Do they go into the Pentagon? How do we know that you're -- they're supposed to then send these ballots to the correct states, to the correct county offices. I said, could you please explain how we know that you're sending them off the way they should be sent? That you're sending all the votes for both candidates? They said, actually, these ballots, the faxed ballots from soldiers and the e-mailed ballots from soldiers don't come to the Pentagon, they go to a defense contractor called Omega Technologies. Well, I had never heard of Omega Technologies. It seems that it had been never described anywhere. It was not in any written materials that I could find. I talked to Omega Technologies. It turns out it is a Pentagon contractor. The CEO of it is a contributor to the Republican Congressional Re-election Committee. In this cycle, she's given $6,600. She's on a committee of this Republican Congressional Re-election Committee. She's handling the non-secret ballots, and there's no oversight of any kind. There's no ability for the parties or the candidates to go in and make sure that the ballots are being handled correctly, and that they're all being transferred to the states. I mean, we don't know that they're not, say, throwing out the John Kerry ballots. It's just shocking. The other thing we don't know is how many ballots get handled in this way. There seem to be no reporting requirements. We have no idea how many ballots go in, how many come out. One little disturbing thing that I learned is that this is the process that was used in 2000. Remember when the military ballots came in at the last minute in Florida and may have changed the outcome of the election? We don't know how many went through this office. Now, I should say, many of them went directly to county elections offices, and it may be that this office only handled a few ballots, but we really don't know."
What the hell does any of that have to do with anything. I NEVER said they were throwing out BUSH votes, I said theywere throwing out military votes!!! Is your memory so weak you can;t remember the Dem lawyers in the Florida court rooms trying to clain these votes should NOT BE COUNTED!?!?!
Who cares WHO they were for, just have the decency to LET THEM VOTE!!!
You also forget one the main rules of war, you don;t have the COPNVENIENCE to wait while your enemy reinforces!! What you want is an perfect time to go to war. Time to grow up.
1. The military votes in question were postmarked AFTER election day. Sorry but that is not the way our system is supposed to work.
2. Since Iraq never attacked us (nor even threatened to attack us) this was a war of choice. You forget that none of the threats that Bush, Condi, Rumsfeld, Cheney & Colin pushed were true. Ignoring the fact that we should never have gone in in the first place, since we chose to go in, we had an obligation to be ready.
And you can;t figure out why I guy you think is so stupid keeps kicking your ass...
1) Yes, please, go on justifying throwing out military ballotts!! We can continue to look forward to keeping the White Hosue
2) So, you are saying we should do nothing until someone attacks us. Well, we tried that, do you remember a little date called 9/11 !?!?! We do not have that luxury any more, and your statement only goes to prove why we must not let the Democrats win the White House!!!