Support and criticism of Cindy Sheehan

Rhetoric
In 2005 in answer to critics from "righties and so-called 'fair and balanced' mainstream media" of her rhetorical style, Sheehan wrote: "The people who have come out to Camp Casey to help coordinate the press and events with me are not putting words in my mouth, they are taking words out of my mouth. I have been known for sometime as a person who speaks the truth and speaks it strongly. I have always called a liar a liar and a hypocrite a hypocrite. Now I am urged to use softer language to appeal to a wider audience."
In remarks on April 27, 2005 at a rally for self-described radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, Sheehan said "America has been killing people, like my sister over here says, since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted. I’m going all over the country telling moms: 'This country is not worth dying for'. If we’re attacked, we would all go out. We’d all take whatever we had. I’d take my rolling pin and I’d beat the attackers over the head with it. But we were not attacked by Iraq."
In a letter to author William Rivers Pitt, she wrote, "And most importantly and devastatingly, this war is based on lies and betrayals. Not one American soldier, nor one Iraqi should have been killed. Common sense would dictate that not one more person should be killed for lies. One of the people, my son, was more than enough for me and my family. I will live in unbearable pain until I die. First of all, because my first born was killed violently, and second of all, because he was killed for a neo-con agenda that only benefits a very chosen few in this world. This agenda and their war machine will chew up and spit out as many of our children as they can unless we stop them now."
In a column relating her experience on a June 28, 2005 Larry King Live show, Sheehan described President Bush as having "moronic and callous foreign policies" and said Senator John Warner "fell in lockstep behind his Führer." She said, "this war is a catastrophe" and "we should bring the troops home and quit forcing the Iraqi people to pay for our government's hubris and quit forcing innocent children to suffer so we can allegedly fight terrorism somewhere besides America. How absolutely racist and immoral is it to take America's battles to another land and make an entire country pay for the crimes of others? To me, this is blatant genocide."
In an August 15, 2005 interview on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Sheehan told Matthews that she thought she would not have responded differently to her son's death had he died in Afghanistan rather than in Iraq. Sheehan argued that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was "almost the same thing" as the Iraq war and that in both cases it was wrong to invade an entire country to fight an ideology that did not necessarily represent all of the people of that country. When Matthews pointed out that "...Afghanistan was harboring, the Taliban was harboring al-Qaida which is the group that attacked us on 9/11," Sheehan replied, "Well then we should have gone after Al-Qaeda and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan." Sheehan also argued that American efforts in Afghanistan were not "having any success" and that "our troops should be brought home ."

On September 16, Sheehan likened the National Guard presence in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina relief to that of occupied Iraq stating, "George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self from power."
Support
The website MoveOn.org announced on August 10, 2005 that it was gathering comments via email to place in a two-page newspaper spread in a Sunday edition of the Waco Tribune newspaper in support of Sheehan and her efforts. MoveOn gathered more than 250,000 comments, many of which were included in the advertisement. Tom Matzzie of MoveOn said:
:"In her grief and bravery, Cindy has become a symbol for millions of Americans who demand better answers about the Iraq War. Though right-wing pundits have attacked her personally, her honesty is unimpeachable. Now more and more mothers (and fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, sons and daughters) are standing up with Cindy. Please join us, and together, we'll make sure that President Bush can't escape the reality of this war—even in Crawford, Texas."
Sheehan's sister DeDe Miller, of Bellflower, California, has spoken publicly in support of Sheehan and protested with her in Crawford, Texas.
The criticism of Sheehan by pro-Iraq war pundits and bloggers has in turn been criticized by anti-Iraq war pundits and bloggers. Sheehan supporters, including Phil Donahue and Joe Conason, have criticized such comments, Conason describing the criticism as "baiting a bereaved mother as a traitor".
Rush Limbaugh in particular has been attacked for his coverage of the Sheehan Story by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who described him as the "Worst Person in the World," ridiculed him over a Media Matters for America soundbite which quoted Limbaugh as saying that "There's nothing about that's real," and him of hypocrisy, saying "He also referred to her supporters as dope-smoking FM types. I guess the painkillers wipe out your memory along with your ethics."
Criticism
In 2005 Matt Drudge alleged Sheehan had been inconsistent in her description of her 2004 meeting with President Bush. In 2004 she said: "I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis... I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith." In 2005 Sheehan is also quoted as saying, "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....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."
In an opinion column, argued that Cindy Sheehan "has obviously taken a short course in the Michael Moore/Ramsey Clark school of Iraq analysis and has not succeeded in making it one atom more elegant or persuasive."
On August 11, 2005, Drudge made public an email he claims to have received from Sheehan's sister-in-law (and Casey's paternal aunt), Cherie Quartarolo, in which she was quoted as saying:
:"We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect." the email is signed "Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins." but does not mention the individual names of these relatives.
During a series of interviews published on several websites, Sheehan responded to Quartarolo's statement:
:"My in-laws sent out a press conference disagreeing with me in strong terms; which is totally okay with me, because they barely knew Casey. . . ."
:"We have always been on separate sides of the fence politically and I have not spoken to them since the elections when they supported the man who is responsible for Casey’s death."
Sheehan clarified that:
:" . . . my immediate family, Casey's dad and my three children and my sister, we're all on the same page. And I really think that some of my husband's siblings are with us too."
Linda Ryan, mother of Corporal Marc T. Ryan, a Marine who was killed in Ramadi, says of Sheehan: "She's going about this not realizing how many people she's hurting. When she refers to anyone killed in Iraq, she's referring to my son. She doesn't have anything to say about what happened to my son."
In October 2006, Catherine Moy and Melanie Morgan released their book American Mourning: The Intimate Story of Two Families Joined by War, Torn by Beliefs, in which they make various allegations about Sheehan. On Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Morgan stated that "John Kerry personally, along with Michael Moore, went to Cindy Sheehan just days and a couple of weeks after the death of her son and asked her to make a commercial for him. And they did the same thing, political operatives, they asked the other families."

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