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Category: Political Sub Category: Social Commentary |
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DOES ANYONE HAVE AN OPINION?
Cindy Sheehan has been told that she will be arrested on Thursday if she doesn't leave.
CRAWFORD, Texas — The angry mother of a fallen U.S. soldier staged a protest near President Bush's ranch on Saturday, demanding an accounting from the president of how he has conducted the war in Iraq.
Supported by more than 50 shouting demonstrators, Cindy Sheehan, 48, told reporters, ‘‘I want to ask George Bush: Why did my son die?''
Sheehan arrived in Crawford aboard a bus painted red, white and blue and emblazoned with the words, ‘‘Impeachment Tour.''
Her son, Casey, 24, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. He was an Army specialist, a Humvee mechanic.
Sheehan, from Vacaville, Calif., had been attending a Veterans for Peace Convention in Dallas. She vowed she would camp out as close as she could get to the president's ranch until Bush comes out and talks to her.
Local law enforcement officials were keeping Sheehan four to five miles away from the ranch's entrance.
‘‘If they won't cooperate, we won't,'' Capt. Kenneth Vanek of the McLennan County Sheriff's Department, said of the marchers.
He said the group was stopped because some marchers ignored instructions to walk in the ditch beside the road, not on the road.
Sheehan said she decided to come to Crawford a few days ago after Bush said that fallen U.S. troops had died for a noble cause and that the mission must be completed.
‘‘I don't want him to use my son's name or my family name to justify any more killing,'' she said.
Sheehan said Bush administration officials ‘‘don't have a mission and they don't even ever plan on completing it.'' She said she fears that the United States plans to keep a U.S. military presence in Iraq indefinitely.
The White House responded to the protest, saying the president wants to bring the troops home.
‘‘Many of the hundreds of families the president has met with know their loved one died for a noble cause and that the best way to honor their sacrifice is to complete the mission,'' White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Saturday. ‘‘It is a message the president has heard time and again from those he has met with and comforted. Like all Americans, he wants the troops home as soon as soon as possible''
Sheehan's bus pulled up at a house run by peace activists a few hundred feet from the town's only stoplight. There, she met up with other demonstrators and then led a caravan of about 20 vehicles down a winding road toward Bush's ranch.
The group stopped along the way and sheriff's deputies advised them that if they wanted to go farther toward the ranch, they would have to walk in a ditch along the road.
The marchers walked about half a mile until the deputies stopped them, saying that they had violated their instructions by walking on the road itself instead of staying in the adjacent ditch.
Sheehan protested, saying she had not walked on the road. The deputies refused to let her go farther.
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