Another Book I Won't Read

AP: ‘Peace Mom’ describes Texas vigil in book---

FORT WORTH, Texas - After spending scorching August days with hundreds of war protesters at her makeshift camp near President Bush’s Crawford ranch, Cindy Sheehan slipped away each night to her tent or RV for a few quiet moments on her laptop.

The words came easily as she opined about the war, U.S. leaders, her critics, her supporters. And the tears started to flow no matter how many times she wrote about her 24-year-old soldier son Casey, who died in Iraq last year.

“I miss him more every day. It seems the void in my life grows as time goes on, and I realize I am never going to see him again or hear his voice,” Sheehan wrote. “I knew he was going to be a great man. I just had no idea how great he was going to be or how much it was going to hurt me.”

Now those journal entries are in her book, “Not One More Mother’s Child,” to be released Wednesday. The paperback also contains some of her speeches to peace groups earlier this year, letters to politicians and writings since leaving Crawford.

“I never wrote anything more than a note to excuse my kids from school before Casey was killed, so to see something I wrote in print with my name on it is amazing,” Sheehan told The Associated Press by phone from her home in Berkeley, Calif.

It is amazing how eager the media is to help Cindy Sheehan cash in on her son's death. What an article. It makes me want to throw up: all the sympathy-invoking language and the writer framing Crazy Cindy as some sort of martyr.

Sheehan gained national attention during her 26-day vigil on a Texas roadside near President Bush’s ranch in August. She refused to move until the president met with her or ended his vacation. That moved Arnie Kotler, the founder of a Hawaii publishing company who saw news coverage and read Sheehan’s Internet blog entries from the protest.

“I thought, ’This is already a book. This is incredible,”’ said Kotler of Koa Books, which printed about 20,000 copies. “We got it done as quickly as we could, and the deepest reason is to stop the war.”

This silly little book isn't going to stop the push for freedom. There have already been plenty of anti-Bush books written, which haven't done a thing, other than waste paper and ink.

Sheehan shares details about Casey, her oldest child grew up to be an Eagle scout who considered becoming a priest. He enlisted, Sheehan said, to give something back to the country.

“He didn’t enlist to be used and misused by a reckless commander in chief who sent his troops to preemptively attack and occupy a country that was no immin“ent threat or any threat to our country,” she writes. (emphasis added)

Actually, I believe Casey Sheehan enlisted to spread freedom around the world, which is what the US Military does so exceedingly well. He wasn't used or misused for any of the reasons Crazy Cindy screams about. Casey Sheehan went willingly to an oppressed country and gave his life so those people could be free. He gave his life so we could remain free: free to live our lives, free from the very real threat of Saddam Hussein.

Has Crazy Cindy forgotten that her son, Casey, re-enlisted the summer of 2003? After the War, during the occupation? Someone who didn't believe in the cause, would not have voluntarily re-enlisted.

It's so classy to use one's son's honorable death to dishonorably sell a book.