By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 11 April 2006
I am so tired of the Rovian, heartless, and ignorant smear machine attacking me and my family at every turn of my back.
The latest abomination in their scrutiny of my life is the fact that Casey has no "tombstone." As if it were anybody's business but Casey's family. I am sure every last person who has a problem with this has buried a child and they know what we are going through.
I am being smeared because I have a new car and I have "blown" through "$250,000.00" dollars of Casey's insurance money. I am sure that they have ready access to my bank accounts, too. I know I am writing this to compassionate people who would rather focus on an administration who lies, tortures, kills innocent people using conventional and chemical weapons, spies on its citizens without due process, and is treacherous in outing a CIA operative for petty high school-like revenge, thereby endangering her, her family, and her fellow CIA agents. If it weren't for these criminals, my son wouldn't need a tombstone.
I will tell the world why Casey has no marker yet. In the first place, does anyone who is attacking me know how Casey was brought home from Iraq? We picked him up in the United loading dock in a cardboard box and he was off-loaded into a hearse without one honor guard. We had to wait for about a half hour on a curb near the United freight area for his one escort, who rode from Dover Air Force Base in a seat, while Casey was treated as an over-sized piece of luggage. Has anybody held her other sobbing children who are sitting on a curb in San Francisco, waiting for the remains of their big brother to be carried over to the dock by a forklift?
Our so-called, illegitimate president has never attended a funeral, nor can families see the pictures of their loved ones as they are hauled like freight with flags on them from an immoral war zone. WE don't see them because Mama Bush doesn't want to "bother her pretty mind" with the images. America doesn't want to be bothered, either. We had a Casualty Officer who abandoned us when our mortuary refused to pay the cemetery and told us that the "government sent the money to the mortuary, so now it is your problem. You may have to sue the mortuary." Our government discards and dishonors its own.
My Casey wasn't always a soldier. He was a son and brother whose murder has left an aching hole in our lives worse than an amputation. Sooner or later, amputations heal and quit throbbing; this hole never will, or can, heal.
For the first year after Casey was killed, I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to place a TOMBstone on my son's grave. I didn't want one more marble proof that my son was dead. I couldn't even call where he was buried a "cemetery," I had to call it "Casey's Park." I placed fresh flowers in the cup every week and journaled there almost on a daily basis, and often laid on it and fell asleep and dreamed of my needlessly killed son. Have any of these people who claim that I am pissing on my son's grave even visited him? Have they visited the grave of any soldier needlessly or senselessly killed in George's war of choice for oil and profit? Have they sobbed uncontrollably for my first born who shouldn't even need a gravestone? No, all they want to do is attack a mother who wants to prevent other people from having to bury their own child. They want to perpetuate a war that has already killed many thousands of our fellow human beings for absolutely nothing.
Casey's shell is buried in Vacaville, California, not his spirit. He lives with me and he is constantly with me as I travel the world so other families, Iraqi or American, do not have to bury their children. Casey lives in the hearts of everyone who wants peace and works for peace. He will never truly die.
There are many people whom the Bush regime has killed, either directly or indirectly, by their murderous policies: there are people buried under rubble of Iraq and who were buried under the rubble of the World Trade Towers, and if their families were lucky they could find small parts to bury, before their remains were carted away in the enormous trucks and barges; there are people still unaccounted-for in the swamps of New Orleans and in refrigerated trucks in Mississippi that will never even have graves, let alone gravestones. The Bush regime is good for business, all right; especially the funeral business.
I know these people are searching for proof that I am a horrible person, and it must be evidence that I didn't love Casey if he doesn't have a marker. I know that they can't support a criminal regime that is slipping into fascism, so they have to attack a mom for the "crime" of being broken-hearted and trying to save lives.
What they don't know is that they can't stop me from trying to save lives. No matter what they cook up next.
It is too important. No more needless gravestones. No more wasted lives.
Former diplomat speaks to more than 50 in Terre Haute
By Joanne HammerThe Tribune-Star
On her way to Camp Casey in Texas, retired Col. Ann Wright stopped in Terre Haute to share her military experiences and explain why she opposes the war in Iraq.
“It is our responsibility as citizens to stand up and say the government is wrong,” said Wright, who spoke Sunday to more than 50 people in the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation.
Wright was one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned in March 2003, shortly before President Bush announced the invasion of Iraq. At the time, she was serving as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia.
“At age 56, I finally made a stand of consciousness,” Wright said. “I found something totally appropriate to resign over.”
Among her reasons for resignation was her inability to represent U.S. policy with regards to Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea and the curtailment of civil liberties in America, she wrote in her resignation letter to former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
“With every administration, there are things to be concerned about,” Wright said. “It is our right to dissent, critique and criticize but do it with knowledge. I understand some of the rationale and I respectfully dissent.”
Since the 1990s, the international community had Saddam Hussein and Iraq in its sights, she said. Despite some speculation weapons of mass destruction were in the Iraq, none turned up after investigations in 2002 and other sources confirmed they were not in existence.
“Was there a need to go to war in March 2003?” asked Wright. “I’m not dissenting against the use of military. They haven’t done anything wrong — they’ve followed orders and were sent to a war I believe is illegal, a war of aggression, which by international law is a crime.”
Instead, she said the U.S. should have used non-military action and allowed the United Nations an opportunity for diplomacy.
Before entering the Foreign Service in 1987, Wright served in the Army and Army Reserve for 29 years. She has master’s degrees from the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. and a master’s degree and a law degree from the University of Arkansas.
After entering the Foreign Service, Wright served in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada and Nicaragua. She was the first in the state department to go to Kabul, Afghanistan and in 2001 she helped re-open the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
When the current administration decided to invade Iraq without United Nations’ approval, America acted like a “bully,” Wright said.
Under international law, when a country invades and occupies another country, it must protect infrastructure and museums.
Wright and others figured for one annexed area in Iraq about 150,000 soldiers would be needed to protect infrastructure and comply with international law. Instead, top officials decided that was too many people and did not comply with regulations — leaving the museum in Baghdad unprotected, she said.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are Democratic or Republican, it’s whether or not you want your country to be known as the biggest bully, going after smaller counties, and we sit back and let it all happen,” Wright said. “We’ve got a situation we’ve got to resolve. We are the perpetrators and recipients of violence. So long as we are there, the violence will escalate. We might as well paint a bull’s-eye on every American diplomat, soldier and Iraqi who cooperates with us.”
Wright recommends soldiers be withdrawn from Iraq and allow the United Nations, who are ready to help, work with Iraq, she said.
Although the military does positive things such as operate clinics, “the overall policy of why we’re in there undermines those small acts of kindness they are able to do in specific areas,” she said. “It’s just plain violence. The only way to end it is to get out of it.”
Next Sunday, Wright plans to join Cindy Sheehan at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas for a vigil and protest against the war. Sheehan’s son was killed two years ago in Iraq.
Cathy McGuire, founder of Terre Haute Stop War on Iraq, also met Wright at camp Casey, never dreaming she would one day come to Terre Haute.
“She is an extremely informed person because of the kind of work she’s done,” McGuire said.
“It’s a breath of fresh air to hear what I think is the truth and what a lot of us saw from the very beginning,” said Suzanne Carter of Terre Haute.
The talk was sponsored by the Indiana Peace and Justice Network, Terre Haute Stop War on Iraq and the Unitarian Universalist Social Action Committee.
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