Taking a stand on Cindy Sheehan

I'm feeling a little bummed out tonight. I hollered at my friend Steven Couch over this post. It's not that I don't believe what I said is true, but I kind of took out my frustration about the overall senseless and blindly partisan support for Bush on him and made it too personal.

I know he won't hold it against me but I just want to make clear that these words are meant as much or more for the Michele Malkins of the blogosphere as they are for him. Leaving aside the most personal paragraphs, this is what I said.

My question to you is why do you hold a bereaved mother - a citizen and a voter - to a higher standard than your president, a publicly elected official? It's rather too convenient to ignore that Bush changed his rationale for the invasion of Iraq at least a half dozen times in those intervening months. Not to mention the overwhelming body of evidence that has accrued since then to prove Bush and his minions deliberately lied to take us to war in the first place.

Cindy is asking the questions now, not just for herself but for me and the 62% of the country that is willing to admit we've been snookered by this administration. I would think someone of your intelligence would welcome those answers as well.

....stop talking like a lawyer and start thinking like a working class American.

Of course Cindy is getting better at dealing with the press. If you gave 100 interviews in 24 hours, I'd bet you'd be pretty damn good at it too. You fail to acknowledge that she has been working her butt off for the peace movement for at least the last year, pounding the pavements and speaking to any group that would have her, and doing it all in relative obscurity. How dare you judge her motives while giving Bush a free pass on his deceit and obfuscations?

Cindy has demonstrably stood by her principles and has sacrificed much more for them than either you or I could claim. And how would you suggest the press is "giving her a free pass?" What would you have them do? Force her to undergo psychiatric testing to prove she's sincere?

I just don't get it. You won't call for Bush to come clean on who leaked Plame's name, on why he knowingly made the false claim about the Niger yellowcake in the SOTU and won't demand a set of metrics for measuring the folly in Iraq, but you want an ordinary citizen to be raked over the coals for something she said only two months after her son was killed fighting a war that never should have been started?

I'm sorry to say it Steven, but I find your position unconscionable and furthermore your insistence on protecting Bush from Cindy's questions makes you just as culpable in the lies.

She has reasonable questions that have been publicly spelled out and that any patriotic American should want answers to. I'm sure if Bush gave an honest public answer in response to them, she would drop her insistence on a private meeting.

As it stands Cindy deserves our thanks for her courage, not criticism over her motives. And make no mistake about it, the only reason she is getting press now is because the web of White House lies has unraveled to the point where a majority of Americans want to hear those answers too.

I stand by these words but I wish I could have delivered them to someone like the tiresome Ms. Malkin, who deserved them so much more. Steven at least takes his position out of principle. For reasons I can't fathom, I'm certain he simply can't bring himself to accept the evidence of White House deceit. Bloggers like Malkin on the other hand, know they're shilling for a liar and simply don't care.

Update: I feel much better now. I made up with Steven. Funny, but I always feel better after I admit I was wrong. Hey, nobody's infallible.