Party Over On Cindy Sheehan Bob Harris

Party Over? On Cindy Sheehan

Bob Harris has a must-read meditation on what things are important to George W. Bush and what aren’t, in light of the treatment of bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan, who wants to know from Bush why her son was killed in Sadr City in April, 2004.

I found her account of Bush’s meeting with her last summer chilling. She recounted it during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Sunday (chilling parts in bold):

‘ BLITZER: All right. So tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now. You had a chance to meet with the president, we’re told, last summer. Is that right?

SHEEHAN: I met with him, I think, about June 17th last year. It was about two and a half months after Casey had died. And it was me…

BLITZER: Was that a private meeting, just you and the president?

SHEEHAN: It was me and my family, my other three children and my husband.

BLITZER: What did you say…

SHEEHAN: And we met with about 15 other — about 15 other families were there also. But we got to — he came in individually and met with each one of us individually.

BLITZER: And so, what did you say to him then?

SHEEHAN: It was — you know, there was a lot of things said. We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity. And we wanted him to look at the pictures of Casey.

He wouldn’t look at the pictures of Casey. He didn’t even know Casey’s name. He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, “So who are we honoring here?” He didn’t even know Casey’s name. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn’t even call him “him” or “he.” He called him “your loved one.”

Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party.

BLITZER: Like a party? I mean…

SHEEHAN: Yes, he came in very jovial, and like we should be happy that he, our son, died for his misguided policies. He didn’t even pretend like somebody…

BLITZER: So now you’re trying to meet with him again. What’s the point? What are you trying to achieve?

SHEEHAN: This week we had a terrible loss of life in Iraq. Everybody knows about the National Guard unit of Marines from Ohio. And that enough saddened me and broke my heart because I know what those families are going through. And it also broke my heart because I’ve been working very hard for a year to end the war in Iraq. And every day that another soldier, another Iraqi person gets killed just rips my heart open. But then George Bush, in a luncheon he was giving a talk at or something, he said that the families can rest assured that their children died for a noble cause. And he also said that we have to honor the sacrifices of the fallen soldiers by continuing the mission, by staying the mission in Iraq.

And I have said this so many times: I do not want him to use my son’s name to continue the killing. It’s bad enough that my son is dead, and I’m a mother whose heart was ripped out on April 4, 2004. Why would I want one more mother, either Iraqi or American, to go through what I’m going through?

I don’t want him to justify my son’s honorable sacrifice to continue his murderous killing policies. ‘