Iraq War Watch: Bush Stays the Course

The ASSociated Press has Protesters Outside, Bush Toes Iraq Line.

President Bush said Thursday he sympathizes with war protesters like the mother camped outside his Texas ranch demanding answers for her solider-son’s death, but he said he believes it would be a mistake to bring U.S. troops home now.

Bush said he had “heard the voices of those saying, `Pull out now.'” And he said, “I’ve thought about their cry and their sincere desire to reduce the loss of life by pulling our troops out. I just strongly disagree.”

“Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy,” the president told reporters between meetings with his military and foreign affairs advisers.

Outside his sprawling ranch, California mother Cindy Sheehan sat on the road with a growing group of war protesters who have pitched tents in shallow ditches. Sheehan’s son, Casey, was killed five days after he arrived in
Iraq last year at age 24.

Sheehan began her standoff on Saturday, declaring she would stay for the entire month that Bush plans to stay in Texas if he won’t meet with her. Since then, dozens of other activists have traveled from across the country to join her, including at least three other parents who have lost children in the war.

“The president says he feels compassion for me, but the best way to show that compassion is by meeting with me and the other mothers and families who are here,” Sheehan said. “All we’re asking is that he sacrifice an hour out of his five-week vacation to talk to us, before the next mother loses her son in Iraq.”

But, Cindy Sheehan has already met and talked with the President over a year ago.

The Leftie Press is full of her story.

Flap feels sorry for her but it is time for Cindy to go home.

She is making a spectacle of herself and her family has even asked her to stand down.

“I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan,” Bush said. “She feels strongly about her position. She has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position. And I’ve thought long and hard about her position. I’ve heard her position from others, which is, `Get out of Iraq now.'”

“And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so,” the president said.

The White House put out an accounting of all the meetings that Bush has had with families of the war dead — 900 relatives of 272 people who have died in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Sheehan met the president in June 2004 but said she deserves another visit since there have been so many revelations about faulty pre-war intelligence since then.

End of story.

Go HOME Cindy!

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