Cindy Sheehan — the mother who’s camped out near Crawford, Texas, demanding to speak with President Bush about her GI son who died in Iraq — is continuing her vigil but the makeshift memorial erected at her campsite has taken a hit.
The campsite has close to a thousand white crosses, each representing GIs who, like Sheehan’s son Casey, were killed in Iraq.
While Sheehan has gotten a lot of support in her vigil, and has been joined by dozens of sympathizers, she’s also sparked some opposition.
Monday night, a pickup truck tore through the rows of white crosses.
The crosses stretched along the road at the Crawford, Texas, camp, bore the names of fallen U.S. soldiers. No one was hurt.
Bush doesn’t want to meet with Sheehan? Fine. O’Reilly & Co. want to accuse of her of treason? Par for the course. But have we really reached a point in Bush’s America where supporters of a war feel justified in running over crosses bearing the names of dead soldiers? Apparently so.
Though it might be nice to think this may have been some kind of accident, reports from Crawford suggest otherwise.
About an hour ago, we got a phone call from our friends up at Camp Casey saying that the line of gravemarkers along the road (Arlington West) had been run over. People there said that as they were talking to a few members of the press, a pick-up truck came down the road and stopped at the fork by the edge of the tents. The driver then jumped out and attached a pipe to the undercarriage with a chain and began to “swerve into the line of crosses,” said Tammara Rosenleaf from Montana. “Then we heard the pipe being dragged over the gravemarkers and the pick-up’s wheels crushing them.”
Out of the 800 crosses, 500 were knocked down and 100 are irreparable. However, the driver was arrested by the local authorities.
It’s hard to believe respecting fallen soldiers has become a partisan issue, but here we are.