1.

AMERICANS JOIN MOM IN WAITING FOR IRAQ ANSWERS
By Carol Marin

Chicago Sun-Times
August 10, 2005

http://www.suntimes.com/output/marin/cst-edt-carol10.html

I keep thinking about that mother who is camped out somewhere near the end of President Bush's driveway in Crawford, Texas. Her name is Cindy Sheehan, and her 24-year-old son, Casey, is dead. He was a soldier, killed last year in the Iraq war.

Sheehan wants a face-to-face meeting with the president to tell him to stop saying that our continued commitment to this awful war "honors" the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for their country. Sheehan doesn't believe we honor anyone by putting new lives on the line. Not more of our own soldiers. Not those of the so-called "coalition forces." And not innocent Iraqi men, women and children for that matter either.

So Sheehan is parked in a ditch, living in a tent, some distance from the president's ranch and refusing to pack up and go back home to California.

I wondered when Bush left Crawford this morning to come here to Illinois if he left his ranch by car and therefore traveled down his driveway in the vicinity of Sheehan? Or was he lifted out by helicopter, flying up and out over her head? Either way, she is down there in Texas today and Bush is here.

The reason the president is taking time away from his summer ranch vacation to come to Illinois is to sign a big transportation bill outside of Aurora. It involves a lot of money, $286.5 billion for all sorts of projects. Of that amount, Illinois will get hundreds of millions of dollars to build bridges, shore up infrastructure and create some new roads. All in all, those things make a difference in people's lives and so there will be a load of politicians standing behind the president, chief among them House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and other members of the Illinois congressional delegation.

This bill represents one of those rare moments of bipartisan unity because all of the state's Democrats and Republicans in Congress voted for it, as did our two United States senators. There will be a lot of applause and and a sense of accomplishment, a lot of back-slapping and congratulation. These are the kind of events that people in public life love. It's a way to focus on the positive.

The Iraq war is not a positive. That's why for two years we haven't been allowed to view soldiers' flag-draped coffins coming into Dover Air Force base. That's why the president keeps the cost of this war out of the official annual budget document, relegating it to supplemental appropriations instead. And that's why the administration would rather use terms like "coalition forces" rather than actually name the countries supporting us. After all, just how many troops do we really think can be supplied by Albania, Azerbaijan and Estonia?

Sadly, for most of us the Iraq war has become terrible noise in the background of our lives. It doesn't really reach us except when we turn on the television or open the newspaper or check our e-mail. That's where it pops up much like an unwelcome Internet ad that we can make disappear with a click. The problem is that it keeps popping up.

We are only a third of the way through August, and 31 more soldiers are dead. Car bombs. Insurgent attacks across the country. Carnage in the cities as well as in the countryside.

Thousands more of our wounded are coming home to rehabilitate their broken bodies and in some cases, tortured minds.

And as Sun-Times reporter Cheryl Reed has shown us in stunning detail, we talk a good game in this country about honoring the troops and respecting our veterans, but we fall disgracefully short of putting our money where our mouth is.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was his usual prickly self when asked how long we expect to keep our troops in Iraq and how long before we begin a promised drawdown. He and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, can't say. They have, in truth, never been able to tell us.

Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and all the rest of them who took us to this war by catering to our worst fears and filling us with false information continue to this day to defend the indefensible.

As the financial cost of this war approaches $200 billion and as we are fast moving toward our 2,000th casualty, something has to change.

Cindy Sheehan, waiting down at the end of the president's driveway in Texas, is right about this war.

--Carol Marin's column appears Wednesday and Sunday in the Sun-Times.

2.

LOCAL WOMEN JOIN WAR PROTESTOR
By Alex Roth

** They say they'll await Bush meeting **

San Diego Union-Tribune
August 10, 2005

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050810-9999-1m10protest.html

The idea of making a spontaneous trip to President Bush's vacation ranch was born when Julie Decker read a newspaper article a couple of days ago and immediately called her good friend Tiffany Strause.

The story was about a Northern California woman whose son had been killed in Iraq and who subsequently decided to camp out in front of Bush's Texas ranch until she got a face-to-face meeting with him.

Yesterday morning, a day after reading the piece, Strause, who lives in San Marcos, and Decker, who lives in Carlsbad, were on a plane to Crawford, Texas, to join the woman in her vigil.

They intend to stay, they said, until Bush -- who is on vacation at the ranch for the next five weeks -- agrees to meet Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville in person.

Neither of the two women knows Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son, Casey, an Army specialist, was killed in Baghdad in April 2004. Neither has a child, much less one who has been killed in Iraq. And neither had been active in the anti-war movement. They hadn't attended any "protests or peace rallies or anything like that," Strause said. "Both of us are very busy."

But they share with Sheehan the firm belief that the war is a colossal mistake. And when they heard about Sheehan's story, "it was like the straw that broke the camel's back," said Strause, 29, who works as a consultant in the computer industry.

"We just want to do something," she said. "We're so sick of being on the sidelines. Being busy isn't an excuse anymore."

She called the war "this generation's Vietnam."

After reading the news article, Decker, 40, a health care executive, tracked down Sheehan with her cell phone number, obtained from the Associated Press reporter who wrote the piece. Decker asked what she could do to help.

"I need bodies," replied Sheehan, who had been camping for several days in a sleeping bag not far from the president's compound.

So Decker and Strause booked a flight, packed some clothes and told the men in their lives -- Decker is married and Strause is engaged -- they'd be gone several weeks.

"I support you," Strause's fiancé told her. "I'll take care of the dogs. You just go."

The women landed in Texas yesterday afternoon, rented a car and headed to Crawford, where they intend to stay in a hotel near where Sheehan is camping out. A half-dozen other people had already arrived to camp alongside her.

Not surprisingly, there are those who view Sheehan's protest as counterproductive and an insult to the men and women serving in the military.

"She's not the only one who lost a son or a daughter, but how many other people do you see camping out in front of the White House?" said Joseph Bertolino Sr. of El Cajon, whose son Stephen, an Army staff sergeant, was killed in Iraq in 2003.

Bertolino, 75, a veteran of two wars and a retired meat cutter, said he supports the Iraqi invasion, adding, "It's hard to lose someone in a war, but (my son) knew the consequences in making the military his career."

Decker and Strause say they expect to stay the full five weeks that Bush is on vacation. They both said they expect to suffer financially. Strause and her fiancé recently bought a house and "our credit card bills are chock-full right now."

"It'll be a crunch," she said. "I'm not a trust-fund baby or anything like that."

But they took along computers and cell phones so they can get some work done when they're not standing outside Bush's vacation home.

"We brought enough clothes for a week and we're going to keep going to the Laundromat," Strause said.

3.

Opinion

MR. BUSH, LET'S TALK
By Joan Vennochi

Boston Globe
August 9, 2005

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/09/mr_bush_lets_talk/

America has a president, not a king. But just like royalty, the nation's commander in chief can keep his distance from the common man or woman.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a son who died in Iraq, is camped out in Crawford, Texas, trying to get a face-to-face meeting with the vacationing George W. Bush. She wants to tell the president that he should pull all American troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, was killed at age 24 in the Sadr City section of Baghdad on April 4, 2004.

The police blocked her a few miles from the Bush ranch. On Saturday, two Bush administration officials were dispatched to speak to her. But Sheehan says she will not leave until she sees the president. "I plan on staying here the entire month of August or until he comes out to talk to me," she told USA Today.

Democracy in America begins with a very intimate connection between the people and those who seek to represent them. In the initial quest for votes, those running for elective office, including the presidency, will talk and meet with virtually anyone. There is no coffee hour too small to attend nor person too humble to approach. Once the vote-seeker wins office, it's a different story. The walls go up. The doors lock. The distance grows.

It happens, to some degree, at every level of government, although, obviously, the higher the office, the higher the wall. It is so much easier to conduct the people's business without dealing directly with the people, especially with disagreeable people.

Once a politician takes up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, much business is conducted through intermediaries. Intermediaries, via the press, ask questions. Intermediaries -- press secretaries and underlings -- convey the president's thoughts. Occasionally, the president holds a press conference. For the most part, contact with average voters is reduced to ceremonial photo opportunities with political supporters.

This is not a Bush White House phenomenon, although Bush is perfecting the art of presidential isolation. During the 2004 presidential contest, Bush's campaign events were packed with supporters and screened for dissidents. Since his January 2005 inauguration, he held four press conferences. During his first term, he held the fewest solo press conferences of any president in the television age.

Bush also escapes frequently to his 1,600-acre ranch. He is currently immersed in a five-week stay away from Washington, the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years, according to the Washington Post.

A presidential spokesman said the time in Crawford is a time for Bush to "shed his coat and tie and meet with folks in the heartland and hear what's on their minds."

This week, the president will meet with his economic advisers and foreign policy team, go to a fundraising lunch, and attend a Little League championship game. So far, Sheehan is not on his agenda. But he knows what is on her mind, and that is his excuse for declining to meet with her.

Sheehan and other families of fallen troops met with Bush two months after her son's death. Since then, she has made her antiwar feelings clear. She speaks around the country against the war. After Bush was reelected, she and other protesters on Pennsylvania Avenue turned their backs on Bush's motorcade.

According to press reports, Sheehan said she decided to come to Crawford after Bush said once again that U.S. troops are dying for a noble cause and the mission must be completed. Now, she says, she wants to ask the president, "What did my son die for?"

Sheehan told the AP that the Bush advisers dispatched to talk to her told her "we are in Iraq because they believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that the world's a better place with Saddam gone, and that we're making the world a safer place with what we're doing over there."

She said that one of the advisers said that Bush "really does care." Her reply: "If he does care, why doesn't he come out and talk to me?"

Driven by personal grief, Sheehan does not accept the commonly accepted boundaries between the people and the person who occupies the Oval Office. With nothing to lose since she lost her son, she is barging into personal presidential space and posing rude questions.

How long before more Americans join her and the clamor invades the Bush castle -- and that other castle known as Congress?

--Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.