Monday, August 08, 2005

Urgent: Woodstock 2005 Bands Needed NOW - Crawford, Texas

Bush et al. 'ditched' her:

Slain soldier’s mother keeps protest vigil at Bush ranch

Drop your schedules and GO - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/ctx45

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION

CALLING ON ALL FREE THINKING PEOPLE WHO DEMAND PEACE IN THE WORLD.

EVERYONE! SEND THIS OUT TO ALL YOUR E_MAIL LISTS. CALL YOUR LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS / MEDIA!

GET TO CRAWFORD NOW.

LETS GET THOUSANDS THERE. SUPPORT CINDY AND GET OUR MESSAGE OUT.

LETS MAKE THIS A VACATION GEORGE BUSH WILL NOT FORGET.

CALL EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND GO. THIS IS OUR CHANCE. MAKE YOUR STATEMENT.

THEY LIED!!! AND HE TAKES A VACATION!

HE"S ON A HOLIDAY WHILE OUR TROOPS ARE DYING!! IT’S AN OUTRAGE.

Rest of the story on Woodstock + comments - URL.: http://tinyurl.com/ctx45

BELOW: ARMY NEWS CARRIES USA TODAY STORY ON CINDY SHEEHAN

Slain soldier’s mother keeps protest vigil at Bush ranch

By Oren Dorell - USA Today*

August 08, 2005 - CRAWFORD, Texas — Biting bugs. Baking sun. The cold shoulder from residents. To Cindy Sheehan, they’re just obstacles to be overcome in her quest for a meeting with President Bush at his ranch here in central Texas.

The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, Sheehan, 48, of Vacaville, Calif., is camping near the president’s ranch. She’s set up on a narrow strip of land between the hardtop of Prairie Chapel Road and a drainage ditch.

“I plan on staying here the entire month of August or until he comes out to talk to me,” she says. Bush is spending five weeks at his ranch.

Spc. Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in Baghdad on April 4, 2004, five days after he arrived in Iraq. A former Eagle Scout who trained as a Humvee mechanic, he had volunteered to help bring in soldiers wounded in an ambush. He died after his convoy came under attack.

Bush met with the Sheehan family and other families of fallen troops in June 2004 at Fort Lewis, Wash. Cindy Sheehan has said she did not get across to Bush how misguided she believes his policies are, so she decided to act against him.

Sheehan has been involved in protests against Bush since last year. She founded Gold Star Families for Peace, which is described on its Web site as made up of “families of soldiers who have died as a result of war.” She helped form a political group that ran TV ads in the fall of 2004 asking people to vote against Bush. The ads were picked up by MoveOn.org, an anti-Bush group, and were broadcast in several states.

She tried to crash a Bush fundraiser in St. Petersburg, Fla., in October. And she spoke around the country against the war, including at a protest in Washington before the election in which anti-war activists carried cardboard coffins to Arlington National Cemetery.

After Bush was re-elected, she joined protesters on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington who turned their backs on his motorcade during his inaugural parade.

She said she decided to seek another audience with Bush when she heard his comments about the war last week, after a spike in American deaths. The fallen men and women “died in a noble cause,” Bush said Wednesday. “Their families can know that we will honor their loved ones’ sacrifice by completing the mission.”

Sheehan said she wants to tell Bush not to use her son’s death as a reason to continue the war, and to ask “why (Bush’s twin daughters) Jenna and Barbara and the other children of the architects of this disastrous war are not in harm’s way, if the cause is so noble.”

She is being supported by the Crawford Peace House, which has facilitated about two dozen protests in the town since 2002.

Bush’s deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin, and national security advisor Stephen Hadley met with Sheehan about 45 minutes at her campsite Saturday afternoon, but Sheehan remained dissatisfied.

She said Hadley told her the president “really cares” about men and women in uniform. “And I said, ‘You can’t tell me that because I’ve met with him and I know that he doesn’t care,’ “ she told CNN.

“I think they thought I’d be very impressed and intimidated that these two high-level officials came to talk to this little grieving mother and that I’d leave,” she said.

[enditem] - Army Times - Story - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/ant3h

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/8zhvo
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

*'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC video & text - interview United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

*Corporate News Media: Incompetent, Criminally Negligent or Complicit? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqpfe

*Impeachbush.org is mobilizing a massive impeachment contingent at the huge September 24, 2005 anti-war March on Washington. Assemble at 12 noon at the White House. The plans of the impeachment movement - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cex28

*Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org - We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments' - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

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CNN report - Soldier's mom digs in near Bush ranch

CNN Quote: "In a Newsweek poll released Sunday, 64 percent of those asked said they do not believe the war in Iraq has made Americans safer, and 61 percent said they disapprove of the way the president is handling the war."


FPF - France - fwd. SHOCK! - Guess what story is getting play on CNN!?

Soldier's mom digs in near Bush ranch

Senator sees 'echoes of Vietnam' in vigil to meet president

Cindy Sheehan tries to keep cool Sunday while protesting near President Bush's ranch in Crawford.

Sunday, August 7, 2005 - CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) -- A mother whose son was killed in Iraq says she is prepared to continue her protest outside President Bush's ranch through August until she is granted an opportunity to speak with him.

Later, in a TV interview, a Democratic senator from California said the episode evokes images that were commonplace during the Vietnam War.

Cindy Sheehan's 24-year-old son -- Army Spc. Casey Sheehan of Vacaville, California -- was killed in Baghdad's Sadr City on April 4, 2004. The Humvee mechanic was one of eight U.S. soldiers killed there that day by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. (Full story)

They are among the 1,829 American troops, including 31 this month, who have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The president -- who is spending a nearly five-week-long working vacation at his Texas ranch -- said in a speech Wednesday that the sacrifices of U.S. troops were "made in a noble cause." (Full story)

Sheehan said she found little comfort in his comments.

"I want to ask the president, why did he kill my son?" Sheehan told reporters. "He said my son died in a noble cause, and I want to ask him what that noble cause is."

Sheehan said hers was one of a group of about 15 families who each met separately with the president one day last June.

"He wouldn't look at the pictures of Casey. He didn't even know Casey's name," she told CNN Sunday. "Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject."

Sheehan said she was so distraught at the time that she failed to ask the questions she now wants answered.

"I want him to honor my son by bringing the troops home immediately," Sheehan told reporters Saturday. "I don't want him to use my son's name or my name to justify any more killing."

Sheehan, who co-founded the anti-war group Gold Star Families for Peace, led about 50 demonstrators near the Bush ranch Saturday. Some protesters were with the group Veterans for Peace, which was holding a convention in Dallas.

The protesters stopped their bus miles from the ranch in Crawford, and walked less than a half-mile before being stopped by local law enforcement officials.

A message on the Gold Star Families Web site says, "We want our loved ones' sacrifices to be honored by bringing our nation's sons and daughters home from the travesty that is Iraq IMMEDIATELY, since this war is based on horrendous lies and deceptions.

"Just because our children are dead, why would we want any more families to suffer the same pain and devastation?"

The message also urges Bush to send his twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, to Iraq "if the cause is so noble."

The site says the group is made up of families of soldiers who have died as a result of war, primarily in Iraq.

Joe Hagin, White House deputy chief of staff, and Stephen Hadley, national security adviser, met with Sheehan for about 45 minutes Saturday, according to White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

Sheehan said that the two men "were very respectful."

"They told me the party line of why we are in Iraq," she said. "I told them that I don't believe that they believed that."

Duffy said Saturday that "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."

Bush has refused to provide a time frame for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, saying American forces will return home when Iraqis can take care of their own security.

"President Bush wants the troops home as soon as possible, but the U.S. will not cut and run from terrorists," Duffy said.

Sheehan elicited sympathy from both sides of the political spectrum on Sunday.

"What you're seeing with that mom trying to meet with President Bush is echoes of Vietnam," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat. "Because no one is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."

"I think the president ought to meet with this mother," said Sen. George Allen, a Virginia Republican. "What I would say to her is her son will always be remembered as a great hero and a patriot, advanced freedom in Iraq and the Middle East, has made this country more secure."

Boxer said her own message would be different: "I would tell her to do everything she could to spare other families this grief, to get us off this cycle of violence."

RECENT SURVEYS HAVE SHOWN DECREASING PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR THE WAR.

In a Newsweek poll released Sunday, 64 percent of those asked said they do not believe the war in Iraq has made Americans safer, and 61 percent said they disapprove of the way the president is handling the war.

The telephone poll of 1,004 adults was taken from Tuesday to Thursday last week and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

[enditem] - CNN's Elaine Quijano contributed to this story.

FPF-links:

Annan: 'The war in Iraq is illegal' -BBC - Url.: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm

Iraq / DU-disaster Url.: tinyurl.com/6o4na

Professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki report - Url.:  tinyurl.com/6ljxa

''The Lancet'' and the ''Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health'' report: ''Over 100.000 killed in the illegal Iraq war'' - Url.: tinyurl.com/5gys7

Bush interv. ABC: No WMD's but many killed: "It was worth it". - Url.: tinyurl.com/6bal9

Former Secr. of State Madeleine Albright in her comment on half a million dead children in Iraq: "We think it's worth it" On CBS 60' Minutes - Url.: tinyurl.com/2vmc8

Iraq Body Count - Url.: www.iraqbodycount.net/

A crime against humanity is an act of persecution against a group, so heinous as to warrant punishment under international law: Please scroll - Url.: tinyurl.com/6rphj

*Corporate News Media: Incompetent, Criminally Negligent or Complicit? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqpfe

*A question not only in the US: Who owns you? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/db3of

*Impeachbush.org is mobilizing a massive impeachment contingent at the huge September 24, 2005 anti-war March on Washington. Assemble at 12 noon at the White House. The plans of the impeachment movement - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cex28

*Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org - We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments' - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/8zhvo
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

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