Amazing Grace and Cindy
CounterPunch
by David Krieger

"Cindy Sheehan's courage should help restore our faith in the power of individuals to speak truth to power and make a difference. Her protest is in the best traditions of this country, those of Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez. She has showered us all with her Amazing Grace." (08/16/05)

http://www.counterpunch.org/krieger08162005.html

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Desecration of the dead
Truthout
by William Rivers Pitt

"The harassment of the activists in Crawford has been growing by the day. .... One could say this is to be expected. Cindy Sheehan and the military families who have joined her have touched a raw nerve among the slowly dwindling ranks of Bush supporters. They are angry, and more than a little scared of the fact that one grieving mother has managed to throw a couple of torpedoes into the side of their battleship. But the Arlington West cemetery is something else entirely. Truthout reporter Scott Galindez was on the scene after the attack. "Respect for this country's dead is not a partisan issue," he wrote afterwards. "Putting up memorials of our country's fallen is not a 'liberal' act. It is an American act. Even a group of counter-protestors from Dallas last week draped flags and flowers over many of the gravemarkers, and many were moved to tears at the sight of the long line of dead soldiers. It's too bad that someone else who disagrees with Cindy felt they needed to wipe out the memory of our fallen in such an obscene manner.'" (08/16/05)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081605A.shtml

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The mother of all battles
Salon
by Joan Walsh

"The smearing will continue, but it's already too late: Cindy Sheehan has launched an American antiwar movement. Maybe, as Matt Drudge blared over the weekend, she's said controversial things about Israel. Maybe the IRS will chase her for tax evasion, since she's reportedly announced that she won't pay taxes for 2004, the year her son Casey died in Iraq. Maybe her family has been shaken by her activism. Maybe the smears will even work, and cost Sheehan some of her mainstream political credibility. It doesn't matter: Someone else will take her place." [subscription or ad view required] (08/16/05)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/08/16/mother/
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Cindy Sheehan's fellowship of grief
Tom Paine
by Celeste and Dante Zappala

"We are in Crawford, Texas. We are sunk down into the soil of our country, digging in for a few days near the president's ranch. Our friend Cindy Sheehan has been entrenched here for a week, demanding a meeting with the president. We've come to speak up for a man who is now forever silent. Sgt. Sherwood Baker, our Sher, was a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard. He was killed in Baghdad last year. He was on duty for the Iraq Survey Group. He was looking for weapons of mass destruction. We came to bear witness to this event and to share our story. As we hover beneath the surface of the drama between Cindy and the president, we've rediscovered the real cause of the antiwar movement." (08/15/05)

http://tinyurl.com/9dcmq

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The Iraq war and the politics of grief
Christian Science Monitor
by Brendan O'Neill

"In America and Britain, the grief of parents who lost sons or daughters in Iraq has become a potent political weapon -- much more so than in other recent wars. In my view, these moms and dads have been badly let down by both sides of the war debate. The war's authors have offered little justification for the sacrifices made by loved sons and daughters in Iraq, which has allowed the families' raw grief to fester into public anger -- and the war's opponents have sought cynically to exploit the families' sorrow for political ends. Currently, Cindy Sheehan is camped outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. And she's determined to stay put until the president tells her exactly what 'noble cause' her 24-year-old son Casey died for in Iraq." (08/16/05)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0816/p09s02-coop.html