Grieving mother stands up for US soldiers in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan wants the US President to remove American troops from Iraq. Picture / Reuters

Something strange is taking place deep in the heart of Texas, where the President of the United States is holed up at his Prairie Chapel ranch, a few miles from the town of Crawford.

There, in the space of a few days, a middle-aged Californian, whose soldier son died in Iraq, has become arguably the best-known woman in the US.

On one level, the attention generated by 48-year-old Cindy Sheehan - from the hitherto obscure town of Vacaville, an hour's drive north-east of San Francisco - merely proves the old adage that, like nature, the news business cannot tolerate a vacuum.

Obedient to the tradition that the US President must be covered 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (including holidays), dozens of White House reporters are having to spend this sweltering August on the plains of central Texas as George W. Bush takes his customary extended summer holiday.

Normally, hard news barely extends beyond barbecue fund raisers, a few minutely choreographed but content-free trips to "meet ordinary Americans", and the odd presidential excursion to a little league baseball game. This year, however, manna has descended in the desert for the media mini-horde.

What started as a one-woman protest has turned into a metaphor for a country's growing disillusion at an increasingly unwinnable war.

Sheehan - personable, sincere, articulate, and bereaved of a son - has turned into the human face of this disillusion.

The Lone Star State, too, has been contributing an extra dash of colour - most notably when Larry Mattlage, a farmer who rents his land to networks for a view of the President's 647ha spread, fired his shotgun twice into the air, sending reporters into a frenzy and an ever-nervous presidential secret service into apoplexy.

He claimed he was merely warming up for the dove-hunting season.

But in the next breath Mattlage made clear the real source of his exasperation - Sheehan's camp, which is now into its second week.

Yesterday she rushed to the bedside of her mother who had a stroke, though she vowed to return for the remainder of the President's holiday.

But her "camp-in" is anything but a hollow summer stunt. Never has the Iraq war been so unpopular.

Most Americans now think the US-led invasion of 2003 was a mistake, and by a margin of almost two to one disapprove of Bush's handling of it. Like Sheehan, they want some or all of the 138,000 US troops in Iraq brought home, and soon.

Even Republicans are becoming queasy at the implications for next year's mid-term elections, if the present bloodshed continues.

Even conservative talk-show hosts such as Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, normally a reliable cheerleader for the Administration, have become withering in criticism of Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary.

Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in a firefight when his unit was attacked by Shiite militias south of Baghdad on April 4 last year, just a fortnight after he arrived in Iraq.

When he died, the public mood about the war was starting to waver, but was still broadly supportive. That is no longer the case.

The loss of 14 Marines in the roadside bombing near Haditha on August 3 - the deadliest incident yet of its kind - brought home as never before the relentlessly rising cost of a conflict in which almost 1850 US soldiers have died.

Three days after Haditha, Cindy Sheehan set up camp at a junction in the road 7km south of the President's ranch - as near as the Secret Service would permit.

As the national media latched on to the story, "Camp Casey" grew.

By Sunday evening more than 100 people were camped there, including some who had driven more than 2600km. A few have left, but others have arrived to take their place. For several hours during the day, numbers were swollen by hundreds of anti-war protesters.

Small white crosses bearing the names of dead soldiers make an impromptu roadside shrine. Banners have sprouted on the trees, while supporters across the country send daily consignments of flowers.

Portable toilets give a temporary permanence to the scene - as have the local police officers urging sightseers to move on. At least one celebrity has shown up too - Viggo Mortensen of The Lord of the Rings.

As public attention has grown, Sheehan's protest has acquired a highly professional veneer. She is a co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, an anti-war group that has demanded the impeachment of Bush, and is no media neophyte. A Washington public relations firm is on the spot to co-ordinate and maximise press coverage.

On Saturday - the day after Bush's motorcade swept past Camp Casey without stopping, en route to a fundraiser for Texas Republicans Gold Star Families even spent US$15,000 ($21,400) on a television commercial.

In the ad, Sheehan declares: "All I wanted was an hour out of his extended vacation time, but he's refused to meet with me and other military families. We just want honest answers."

Joe Trippi, the 2004 presidential campaign manager of Howard Dean, has organised pro-Cindy blogs, while Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11 and a professional anti-Bush agitator, has devoted his website to the cause.

The stakes are growing, and Bush's supporters are mounting a counter offensive. Across the road from Sheehan and her followers, more than 200 supporters of the President staged their own rally on Sunday, holding signs branding Sheehan a traitor.

O'Reilly's diatribes against Rumsfeld have not stopped him labelling her "treasonous" while others have seized upon divisions within the Sheehan family.

Sheehan and her husband separated because of their differences over the war and her increasing activism after Casey's death.

Last week, some of her in-laws issued a bitter statement accusing Sheehan of "promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name". Other opponents have said she did indeed meet Bush, in June 2004, and seemed satisfied with the encounter.

So why, they ask, has she suddenly changed her tune, accusing the President of being callous and uncaring when he met her? Sheehan explains that her judgement a year ago was still blinded by grief. The argument is squalid and demeaning. But it is a sign of just how nasty this fight may yet become.

In public, the White House is hoping to ride out the embarrassment.

The day after Sheehan arrived, it sent out Stephen Hadley, the President's national security adviser to talk to her. She described the meeting as "pointless". But the White House thinks it has done enough.

Bush last week said he had thought "long and hard" about Sheehan's position, but has not indicated he will bow to her demand for a face-to-face session - at least not in circumstances that smack of a media circus.

Whether this strategy succeeds depends on events. A PR battle with a grieving mother who has lost a son in a controversial war and who comes across well on television is one no president would relish.

On the other hand, even a White House press corps with little else to report may become bored.

Perhaps some new crisis will sweep Camp Casey off the front pages. Or an encampment of war supporters may sprout forth, as a rival focus for the media.

Perhaps the growing professionalism of the movement will cause the public to see it as just another political campaign.

On the other hand, another Haditha might transform Sheehan's protest into a national movement. If a few dozen more US servicemen die, more Americans will wonder why their soldiers are dying in Iraq at the hands of an insurgency that seems to draw strength and inspiration from the US military presence.

Bush's ratings would decline further, and Camp Casey might go down in history as the moment when this President lost America and, with it, his war.

Cindy Sheehan herself is under few illusions about the limits of her mission.

"Something might happen and this won't be the story anymore," she admits. "But I don't want this to end. Ending the war is the story."

- INDEPENDENT