One mother's loss becomes a problem for the president
- From: Gordy <gstued@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 11:20:44 -0400
By Richard W. Stevenson
CRAWFORD, Tex. - President Bush draws antiwar protesters just about
wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy
Sheehan has since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here
this weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all
Americans troops out of Iraq now.
Ms. Sheehan's son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she
became an antiwar activist. She says she and her family met with the
president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington State.
But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Mr. Bush's
1,600-acre spread on Saturday, the 48-year-old Ms. Sheehan of Vacaville,
Calif., was transformed into a news media phenomenon, the new face of
opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in
flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the
president and the Republican Party.
Ms. Sheehan has vowed to camp out on the spot until Mr. Bush agrees to
meet with her, even if it means spending all of August under a broiling
sun by the dusty road. Early on Sunday afternoon, 25 hours after she was
turned back as she approached Mr. Bush's ranch, Prairie Chapel, Ms.
Sheehan stood red-faced from the heat at the makeshift campsite that she
says will be her home until the president relents or leaves to go back
to Washington. A reporter from The Associated Press had just finished
interviewing her. CBS was taping a segment on her. She had already
appeared on CNN, and was scheduled to appear live on ABC on Monday
morning. Reporters from across the country were calling her cellphone.
"It's just snowballed," Ms. Sheehan said beside a small stand of trees
and a patch of shade that contained a sleeping bag, some candles, a jar
of nuts and a few other supplies. "We have opened up a debate in the
country."
Seeking to head off exactly the situation that now seems to be
unfolding, the administration sent two senior officials out from the
ranch on Saturday afternoon to meet with her. But Ms. Sheehan said after
talking to the officials - Stephen J. Hadley, the national security
adviser, and Joe Hagin, a deputy White House chief of staff - that she
would not back down in her demand to see the president.
Her success in drawing so much attention to her message - and leaving
the White House in a face-off with an opponent who had to be treated
very gently even as she aggressively attacked the president and his
policies - seemed to stem from the confluence of several forces.
The deaths last week of 20 Marines from a single battalion has focused
public attention on the unremitting pace of casualties in Iraq,
providing her an opening to deliver her message that no more lives
should be given to the war. At the same time, polls that show falling
approval for Mr. Bush's handling of the war have left him open to
challenge in a way that he was not when the nation appeared to be more
strongly behind him.
It did not hurt her cause that she staged her protest, which she said
was more or less spontaneous, at the doorstep of the White House press
corps, which spends each August in Crawford with little to do, minimal
access to Mr. Bush and his aides, and an eagerness for any new story.
As the mother of an Army specialist who was killed at age 24 in the Sadr
City section of Baghdad on April 4, 2004, Ms. Sheehan's story is
certainly compelling. She is also articulate, aggressive in delivering
her message and has information that most White House reporters have not
heard before: how Mr. Bush handles himself when he meets behind closed
doors with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq.
The White House has released few details of such sessions, which Mr.
Bush holds regularly as he travels the country, but generally portrays
them as emotional and an opportunity for the president to share the
grief of the families. In Ms. Sheehan's telling, though, Mr. Bush did
not know her son's name when she and her family met with him in June
2004 at Fort Lewis. Mr. Bush, she said, acted as if he were at a party
and behaved disrespectfully toward her by referring to her as "Mom"
throughout the meeting.
By Ms. Sheehan's account, Mr. Bush said to her that he could not imagine
losing a loved one like an aunt or uncle or cousin. Ms. Sheehan said she
broke in and told Mr. Bush that Casey was her son, and that she thought
he could imagine what it would be like since he has two daughters and
that he should think about what it would be like sending them off to
war.
"I said, 'Trust me, you don't want to go there'," Ms. Sheehan said,
recounting her exchange with the president. "He said, 'You're right, I
don't.' I said, 'Well, thanks for putting me there.' "
Asked about Ms. Sheehan's statements, Trent D. Duffy, a spokesman for
the White House, said Sunday: "The president knows one of his most
important responsibilities is to comfort the families of the fallen.
That is why he has personally met with and grieved with hundreds of
families who have lost a loved one who made the ultimate sacrifice. We
can only imagine how painful and difficult it must be for a mother to
lose her son. Our hearts and prayers are always with the moms and dads
and spouses and children of those who have fallen."
It is not clear how the White House will handle Ms. Sheehan. Mr. Bush
usually comes and goes from the ranch by helicopter, but he might have
to drive by her on Friday, when he is scheduled to attend a Republican
fund-raiser at a ranch just down the road from where Ms. Sheehan is
camped out. She will no doubt get another wave of publicity on Thursday,
when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice join Mr. Bush at the ranch to discuss the war.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Reprinted from The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/politics/08crawford.html
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