Home > CINDY SHEEHAN MEETS JOHN McCAIN

CINDY SHEEHAN MEETS JOHN McCAIN

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 28 September 2005
22 comments

Edito Movement Wars and conflicts USA Peter Fredson

By Peter Fredson

Cindy Sheehan has aroused several hundred conservative bloggers, all determined to Swiftboat her in very strong terms. It seems that she met with Senator John McCain, and later called him a “war-monger.” This, to a loyal Bush supporter is intolerable.

She and several supporters met with John McCain. She said that McCain simply told the group what George Bush might have said, and that she didn’t believe his answers to her questions. She stated: “He is a warmonger, and I’m not. I believe this war is not keeping America safer.”

McCain said, “She’s entitled to opinion but we have fundamental disagreements.” He thought that their conversation was just “a rehash” of opinions that everyone knew about.

Cindy talked to Chris Matthews, the Hardball Host on TV, and said: “I have a campaign going, called Meet with the Moms. We have a few questions we are asking each senator and Congress person. He (McCain)) was ready with the answers.”

When pressed about what was the noble cause of fighting in Iraq, Sheehan said McCain replied, "Freedom and democracy." “And then, how many more of our nation’s children are you willing to risk, their lives are you willing to sacrifice because it is a war based on lies?”

MATTHEWS: “Good question. What did he say?”

SHEEHAN: “He said that’s a hard question, because he hopes and prays every day that our children won’t be killed. But they are being killed every day. We have had 40 killed in September so far.”

“Then another question is, what are you doing to bring our troops home from the nightmare of Iraq? He says that we’re trying to train troops, which is really hard when they get blown to pieces just standing in line for the applications, you know?”

When asked why McCain was not more anti-war Sheehan said:
SHEEHAN: “Well, a vested interest in maybe if he is going to run for president, he thinks he has to look strong and looks like he’s capable.”

MATTHEWS: “Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, everybody who might conceivably run for the Democratic nomination in 2008 is backing this war. Why are they doing it?”

SHEEHAN: “Because I believe that they feel like, if they don’t, the nation will perceive them as weak. A strong, good Democratic candidate has to stand up
and say, it’s a war based on lies. We should never have gone there. We shouldn’t be there. And let’s lead our troops out.”

MATTHEWS: “Well, are you going to run for office on the Democratic line anywhere?”

SHEEHAN: “No, no, I’m not going to, because I think I can do more good, like you said, holding their feet to the fire.

Cindy stated: "It’s hard to tell these stories. But we do it to heal ourselves and to heal this country. We do it because we have been broken, and we don’t want anyone else to be broken. We’re doing it for the innocent Iraqis in harm’s way, and we’re doing it for the other families, so they don’t have to hear that knock on the door."

McCain after the meeting said that he believes military action in Iraq was justified. He said that he believes former Iraq leader Saddam Hussein would have attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction had he remained in power and that "I saw the mass graves of thousands of people who were killed by Saddam Hussein.”

Meanwhile McCain kowtows to Bush like a sycophant, even after Bush slandered him in 2000. Whenever Bush needs a loyal person for a photo-op, McCain shows up, last time carrying a birthday cake, just as Katrina was poised to hit New Orleans. Party discipline evidently comes before any discussion about pulling troops out of Iraq

THAT’S WHY the right bloggers are doing their best to derail the Cindy bandwagon, casting her as an anti-American, "professional griever", “A nut case” , “Publicity hound”, “Treasonous and Hateful”. Republican demonstrators trotted out pro-military moms to blunt Sheehan’s message.

They launched a "You Don’t Speak for Me, Cindy" cross-country bus tour. Their rally drew only a few hundred people to the Washington Mall, holding up signs like "Freedom Isn’t Free" and "Saddam Is a WMD" as they listened to speakers like Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy, who accused Sheehan of "whoring the good name of her son" and carrying out a "left-wing socialist agenda."

The Karl Rove mantra is repeated often: “To criticize the War Time president is treason and will get our brave boys over there in Iraq killed. We must fight those terrorists over there, or they will come over here. We must honor those good and brave boys or they will have died in vain. We are bringing peace and democracy to Iraq. And, besides, Saddam is EVIL.”

For skeptics of the Bush assertion that he is bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq they say that you can’t do that by cruise missiles, helicopter gun ships, attack planes and bombs or lobbing grenades into Iraqi houses, knocking down houses, killing Iraqi civilians without even counting their dead, troops with deadly weapons at the ready terrorizing anyone out on the street.

Evidently Bush and Condi have unique definitions of Peace, Democracy and Freedom ready to apply to Iran and Syria as soon as they find a good excuse, or a very good lie, to invade those countries with their version of Shock and Awe and bunker buster bombs for the greater glory and profit of their Neocon cronies.

Forum posts

  • Cindy, you have started your group and protest bravely and spontaneously, without waiting for others to ’wake up’.

    Your independence from the usual political gamesmanship and corruption has been rightly preceived by the people as your strength and as a sign of incorruptibility. It gave hope to a lot of others, who have joined you by the droves, in your fight.

    I really can not see, what it is to be accomplished, other than heart ache and never ending disappointments, by cozying up with those, who have sold themselves out to the system.

    I know, you are new to this and your intentions are noble. I am guessing, that at this juncture maybe you are not sure, which way ahead, but it would seem to be more productive to build on your strength and the people who have stood by you, right from the beginning. Please listen to your heart and plan together with them to the long and arduous journey ahead.

    God Bless You in Your Mission of Peace and Jusice!
    Tom

  • Cindy Sheehan is a strong voice for the children, literally children, of Iraq being killed in Bush’s phony war on terror. She is a voice for Americans whose somewhat older children have now died by the thousands, plural (almost 2000).

    George Bush, on the other hand, is a lying bastard, just as he says. Everyone knows that WMD, terror links, etc., were just lies. Forgeries.

    "Rush" Limbaugh is just a a pompous Bush-worshiping drug addict. He is a chickenhawk who avoided military service on the basis of a pimple on his butt, but is the loudest mouth urging aggression in the Middle East.

    Colin Powell is a clown whose Ronald McDonald show-and-tell at the UN should be an embarassment to all Americans.

    Condi Rice is a bloodthirsty witch.

    Evangelicals are phonies and yokels who bought into Y2K and buy into any foolishness coming out of the Republican party and the televangelists of the Religious Right.

    Tom Delay is a crook who couldn’t even be honest on his income taxes. The IRS once had to put a lein on his house in Sugarland, TX.

    Karl Rove is a Mussolini-loving fascist who wants to turn the US into a fascist state.

    Republicans who are standing by the "worst President" are not people of good will.

    Virtually the whole White House coterie and upper echelons at the Pentagon are war criminals. They deserve to be prosecuted, jailed and, many of them, face capital punishment as was done at Nuremberg. It is possible, you know.

    Clayton Hallmark

    • "Rush Limbaugh is just a pompous lying drug addict"

      That is why he gets on so well with Mr. Jawbone the cocaine president himself. They are just alike, when Bush was Governor of Texas he advocated the death penalty for drug users, all the while he was snorting cocaine, Rush did the same thing on his radio show until he got busted using oxycotin synthetic heroin. Bush is so coked out all of the time he no longer can control his jawbone which is what cocaine does to the cronic user. The man is not even just an occasional user, he is a hard core addict to have this affliction...watch him on t.v. every day you will see his jawbone twitching from side to side because he is high on coke.

      He needs to be forced into Betty Ford re-hab before he does something really stupid and dangerous. How can the White houser doctors live with themselves knowing Bush is a coke addict and they are doing nothing to remove him from being a danger to the American public? Is everyone in DC just corrupt and willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious?

    • People like you are a disgrace to America. I don’t believe a word of your garbage and as a senior citizen I can tell you the Seniors every where I go are sick of people on both sides of the isle who can do nothing but make outrages charges and play the blame game. We went through the depression, WWII, and Korea before people started this disrespect. Enough!!! Try doing something constructive.

      I am a mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother. And yes I had a father who served in Germany and France in WWI, 2 brothers who were in WWII, one spent 3 years on foreign soil. A brother who was in the worst of Korea, a son-in-law in Viet Nam and Desert Storm and a Grandson who honorable serves today and has been in Iraq more than once.

      Shame on you and your kind.

    • I feel sorry for the propagandized grandmas of this world (or is it really Tom Delay signing in?). When will the golden rule be followed? No one honestly can say they would like another country to come to the U.S. and take over our country and install a military dictatorship as we have done to Iraq. We are there based on GREED, Bush’s, Condi’s, Rummy’s, etc. It’s all about the Fed Reserve getting rich, the military industrial complex getting rich, Cheney’s Haliburton getting rich. Bush and company need to be impeached for lying to this country and congress and Cindy is pointing that out. You GO girl!!!! Zorro

    • Warmonger grandma, blow it out your ass. You are the disgrace to America you and your violent family.

    • Hey, Grandma. You’ve been around long enough to know that WWI, WWII, Korea and VietNam were all wars based on lies. You didn’t? That’s probably why you support this war based on lies.
      On another note, John McCain is a sellout. He didn’t learn a damned thing in N. VietNam.

    • I’m a grand ma!
      I’m a veteran!
      I’m a robot to the elite and I believe everything that is said on the boob tube.
      blow it out your ass grand ma you and your stupid non thinking family of robots can be used for cannon fodder me I choose to use a my brain

    • Please, elaborate on your claim that WWI and WWII were based on lies.

      Please expand on this.

      Thanks Moonbat!

    • You’re the only sane person on this P.O.S. website.

  • I feel what Cindy and those who follow speak of is basic and from the heart. She and others do this because they care about what is happening. They stand against this path of war that has taken the lives of sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. To call those who speak out against the atrocities of this administration traitors is the pot calling the kettle black. This administration has commited high treason and every elected official, elected to lead and represent all the people, who have not stood up and cried foul, are they themselves equally guilty. For they deafened themselves to the sounds of reason and took the sounds of lies for their own.

    This administration does not provide jobs, it encouraged their departure. In their stead they offer war as a means of employment. Instead of finding and funding the ways of peace, hope, and purpose, it initiates and funds war, destruction, and pointlessness. Enabled by corporations, the media, brain washed masses, and people of influence, it strides across this land like a plague. Without the light of Cindy’s everywhere it would snuff us out of existance. If we don’t follow the light we’ll end up like Iraq under Saddam, Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, and a thousand other dictatorships scattered throughout the landscape of history. And we all know where they ended up.

    Cindy’s cause should be all of our cause.

  • It is regretful that anyone has to loose their life. However if you choose to go to work for the police,fire department or one of the branches of the service you are aware from the git go that
    your death is always a possibility.
    she certainly is not the first mother who ever lost a son while he was fighting to save her life.
    Perhaps she should wake up, sit down and shut up.
    I am completely suprised that any of our nations heros would even take the time
    to try to explain anything to her. She obviously is not capable of understanding very much if anything about our freedom or how we managed to acquire it and keep it.
    She doesn’t need answers .. She needs help and understanding...

    veteran of three wars
    w. scott

    • lmao

      "I’m a grandmother"...yeah right

      "I’m a veteran"...yeah right

      "Your a traitor"...yeah right

      You probably all work for Qorvis, but I didn’t see you at the anti-peace rally. They could have used your support for war, there was only a couple of hundred people there...

      "All wars are based on deception" - Sun-tzu

      There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a war. Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and horrific death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war usually lies to their people to create the illusion that support for the war is the only possible choice they can make.

      President McKinley told the American people that the USS Maine had been sunk in Havana Harbor by a Spanish mine. The American people, outraged by this apparent unprovoked attack, supported the Spanish American War. The Captain of the USS Maine had insisted the ship was sunk by a coal bin explosion, investigations after the war proved that such had indeed been the case. There had been no mine.

      Hitler used this principle of lying to his own people to initiate an invasion. He told the people of Germany that Poland had attacked first and staged fake attacks against German targets. The Germans, convinced they were being threatened, followed Hitler into Poland and into World War 2.

      http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/lieofthecentury.html

      "No amount of genius spent on the creation of propaganda will lead to success if a fundamental principle is not forever kept in mind. Propaganda must confine itself to very few points, and repeat them endlessly. Here, as with so many things in this world, persistence is the first and foremost condition of success." - Adolph Hitler - Mein Kampf

      "See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." (Bush in Greece, N.Y., May 24, once more explaining his Social Security plan to a town hall meeting of perfectly average citizens — except they had all been pre-screened to allow only those who agree with him into the hall.)

      http://www.alternet.org/story/22122/

      "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men" - Abraham Lincoln

    • Dear Mr. Scott;

      I thank you, to voice your opinion with eloquence and empathy toward Cindy.

      I and most of us in this site agree with you, that military service in defence of one’s country, is the most noble and patriotic duty one can do. Indeed the whole community has to come together, to defend themselves, if (to give you a grossly simplified example,) Genghis Khan (or his modern equivalent) and his hordes would break through our frontier defences and try to invade us.

      The contention is, that this was not the case with Iraq. Iraq had not constituted any danger even to its neighbours, after its defeat in the first Gulf War, let alone to the distant and all powerful USA. All the reason given for the invasion and occupation turned out to be false, thus rendering the whole operation contrary to the most fundamental articles of International Law, (which the US is signatory,) thus making the US in effect, a ’rogue nation’.

      The security of our country, as well as our allies in the the West, have not been enhanced by this ill conceived war, but rather it has been weakened considerably, due to the destabilisation and radicalisation of the Iraqi people as well as the Muslim Community worldwide.

      The only groups who have benefited from this war, are the war profiteering armament, oil, and service monopolies like Halliburton with close ties to this Administration. That frankly, doesn’t deserve the prescious lives lost on both sides of this man-made calamity.

      Sincerely,
      Tom

    • YES now that you mention it I can see bushes jaw bone flinching and I agree he is a coke addict he is obviusly on coke and is a crack head just like his brouther Jeb daughter who is know to be a crack addict. And to the grandmouther shut your big fat mouth. It’s because of your generation that america has been sold down the river.

    • Cindy Sheehan meets John McCain...poor Cindy, I feel so sorry for her having to meet with a dirt bag like John McCain. It would be really terrible having to force one’s self to have to come face to face with his kind of scum. Personally, I would rather clean toilets at the Grayhound bus terminal than to meet someone like John McCain. I hope she took her barf bag along.

    • John McCain ratted out his fellow prisoners in Nort Vietnam, he sang like a canary and got special treatment. He was a traitor to this country and still is.

    • Oh, and the millions of free Afghani’s and Iraqi’s who want democracy and a future for their children have benefitted too. But they don’t really count, do they?

    • is that you Karl Rove?

    • democracy, if it’s as corrupt as our democracy they can have it.
      1. lying media cotrolled by despots.
      2. lying government www.reopen911.org
      3. rigged elections in 2000 and 2004
      What democracy a 2 party system that is really 1 party to the global cabal elite.
      BRING ON THE REVOLUTION

    • why would you feel the need to put down someone who has probably sacrificed more for this country than you ever would? Its people like you that make me glad that I never joined the military!

    • Right on....it is about time people started to shout the truth and stop sitting silently through the lies being told by Bu$hco and the propaganda arm of his government.