Target Centermass

Gold Star mother and leftist flavor-of-the-month Cindy Sheehan has left her ’60s reenactment in Crawford, Texas, hitting the road in an effort get the U.S. out of Iraq, meet (again) with the president, cry in front of more cameras and generally meander her way towards either a future as an obscure answer in a future Trivial Pursuit question or a train wreck before the public eye. In my opinion, had the journalistic treatment of the Sheehan matter been handled in a professional and balanced manner, the latter would have already taken place.

Sheehan, war protesters leave Texas camp

After a 26-day vigil that ignited the anti-war movement, Cindy Sheehan took her protest on the road Wednesday, while a handful of veterans pledged to continue camping off the road leading to President Bush’s ranch until the war in Iraq ends.

Rather than heading home to California, the mother of a 24-year-old soldier who died in Iraq boarded one of three buses heading out on tour to spread her message.

“This is where I’m going to spend every August from now on,” Sheehan said as she smiled and waved through a bus window, after hugging dozens of fellow protesters.

The group plans to stop in 25 states during the next three weeks, then take Sheehan’s “Bring Them Home Now Tour” to the nation’s capital for a Sept. 24 anti-war march.

It should be noted that, among these many stops, Cindy’s presence is expected at a protest of the Navy’s Blue Angels in Maine, a protest with the ridiculous theme “Stop the Worship of the Gods of War!”

to protest the false god idolatry of the Blue Angels Air Show, whose “ooh-&-aah”performances have one purpose: to promote badly-lagging military recruitment to protest the obscene waste of American tax dollars to stage these Blue Angels’ multi-million dollar extravaganzas [bolded text marked in original by underline]

No explanation of performances by the Blue Angels during healthy recruiting periods is given, nor the fact that the Navy is not suffering in enlistment numbers. Apparently, worshiping at the altar of Ares is reason enough to hate an air show.

Also, a poll has been released that shows the American public mildly supports the supposed cause of Cindy Sheehan, a meeting with the president.

Poll: Bush, protester should meet on war

Slightly more than half of the country says President Bush should meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed last year in Iraq, who is leading a protest against the war outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that 52 percent of the public says Bush should talk to Sheehan, who has repeatedly asked for a meeting with the president, while 46 percent said he should not. Fifty-three percent support what she is doing while 42 percent oppose her actions, according to the poll.

[...]

But the survey also suggests Sheehan’s anti-war vigil has done as much to drive up support for the war as ignite opponents.

Given my already stated belief that the mainstream media has generally failed drastically in its coverage of Cindy’s circus, I would like to see a poll with the following questions:

• Should President Bush meet with Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan?
• Are you aware that President Bush has already met with Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan?
• Are you aware that Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan has lied by giving two irreconcilable versions of that meeting?
• Are you aware that Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan apparently lied about the original contents of an email she wrote to ABC News?
• Are you familiar with any statements by Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan regarding Israel?
• Should our foreign policy be decided by a vote of all Gold Star parents, including Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan, a.k.a. Mother Sheehan?
• Does the phrase “Able Danger” ring any bells?

Meanwhile, here’s a column that demonstrates that not all in the journalism field have been chugging the Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan-flavored Kool-Aid and that her fifteen minutes may be about gone. I particularly liked the following:

When Cindy Sheehan knelt to place flowers on her son’s grave, alone with her pain, she was a sympathetic character whose loss would break a million hearts. When Cindy Sheehan knelt to place flowers next to a stage-prop cross erected for Nikons and networks in Crawford, she was an actress studiously performing for an audience that may easily find other places for their sympathies to repose.

Her supporting cast did her no favors by layering cliches onto what already was becoming a tired script, beginning with–fire up your bongs–Joan Baez.

Having Baez show up for a war protest is like having Oprah show up at a Weight Watchers meeting. You get instant bona fides along with your gratification. With Baez, you get to bask in the real thing–a been-there, done-that star straight from the annals of anger. Speaking to a crowd of about 500, Baez said: “It was the final tear for the overflow and you can’t stop running water. Cindy’s was the final tear.”

Whatever that means. I think something sad and poignant. In any case, Baez’s folk singerese seems an improvement over her declamations at a concert last year in Charlottesville, Va., where Baez revealed that she has “multiple personalities,” including a 15-year-old poor black girl named Alice from Turkey Scratch, Ark.

Tick … tick … tick … tick …

Today’s story of a mass stampede, driven by panic, grew more horrific as the announced death tolls grew. First 600. Then 800. Then this.

A thousand pilgrims crushed and drowned in ‘bomb’ panic

The death toll in the worst single loss of life since the start of the Iraq war was last night heading towards 1,000 after a crowd of about one million Shiite pilgrims making their way across a bridge in Baghdad panicked at reports of a suicide bomber in their midst and stampeded.

Most of the dead were women and children.

Insurgents had already targeted the pilgrims with mortars earlier in the day, killing at least seven, and there were rumours circulating in the crowd that a number of people had also died after eating poisoned food.

But according to Iraq’s interior minister Bayan Jabor, and two leading Shiite officials, the stampede was triggered by a rumour of a suicide bomber in the crowd. Mr Jabor blamed terrorists for starting the rumour.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites had been marching across the Azamiyah bridge, which links a Sunni and Shiite neighbourhood, heading for the tomb of Imam Mousa al-Kadhim, a 9th century Shiite saint.

As the crowd panicked and began to push and shove to get away, many were trapped against a security checkpoint at the western end. Some fell, only to be trampled under foot, and others plunged off the sides of the bridge into the waters of the Tigris river below. Some reports suggested that the railings at the side of the bridge had given way.

“We were on the bridge. It was so crowded. Thousands of people were surrounding me,” said a survivor, Fadhel Ali, 28, barefoot and soaking wet. “We heard that a suicide attacker was among the crowd. Everybody was yelling, so I jumped from the bridge into the river, swam and reached the bank. I saw women, children and old men falling after me into the water.”

Abdul-Mutalib Mohammed, the health minister, said that there were “huge crowds on the bridge and the disaster happened when someone shouted that there is a suicide bomber on the bridge”.

“This led to a state of panic among the pilgrims and they started to push each other and there were many cases of suffocation,” he said.

Police said hundreds of people started running and throwing themselves off the bridge into the river.

“Many elderly died immediately as a result of the stampede but dozens drowned. Many bodies are still in the river and boats are working on picking them up,” said one police officer.

However, at least one report raises questions after surveys of the aftermath.

Questions Arising about Alleged Bridge Stampede in Baghdad

Accompanied by both U.S. and Iraqi army officials, VOA arrived at the Kadhimiya bridge about two o’clock Wednesday afternoon, roughly three hours after news agencies and television news stations began reporting that a deadly stampede had occurred at the site.

[...]

The Iraqi army brigadier general in charge of security on the Kadhimiya side, Jaleel Khalaf Shuail, says he did not witness the stampede, but was told how it began. General Shuail says someone apparently screamed that a suicide bomber was among the crowd of people and triggered the panic.

On the bridge itself Wednesday afternoon, there was one striking sight, which did suggest that something catastrophic had occurred earlier. Hundreds of pairs of shoes littered both sides of the two-lane bridge, which some Iraqis said belonged to the more than 900 Shi’ites who allegedly perished in the stampede.

But there was also a strange absence of ambulances, medical personnel and rescue activities on the bridge or in the river. There was no sign of blood anywhere on the bridge and not a drop of blood could be found on a row of knee-high concrete barriers, which many of the victims were said to have been crushed against.

The barriers had been placed there the day before to deter suicide car bombings. Iraqi and U.S. military personnel, stationed at guard towers at a nearby base with a clear view of the bridge, report that they saw nothing out of the ordinary occurring on the bridge all morning.

Footage of the bridge from an American reconnaissance plane also shows no activity consistent with the reports of mass panic and deaths. The only confirmed incident on Wednesday in Kadhimiya was an early morning mortar and rocket attack, targeting the Shi’ite shrine where an estimated one million Shi’ites from around the country had gathered by day’s end.

VOA visited the nearby Kadhimiya Hospital and found eight bodies and 33 civilians being treated for wounds.

While certainly not a refutation of the story of mass death, the scene shortly afterwards does raise some points to ponder.

I got links.

Carnival of Liberty IX

I’d like to point that the latest installment of the Life, Liberty, Property community‘s Carnival of Liberty. Go read another fine collection of posts from a libertarian slant.

US air strikes on Syrian border kill ‘known terrorist’

The United States launched air strikes near the Iraq-Syria border yesterday, destroying three houses and killing a “known terrorist”, according to the US military.

Iraqi authorities said fighting had broken out in the area between a tribe that supports foreign fighters and another that backs the government.

The attacks by F-16 jets began in a cluster of towns along the Syrian border, near Qaim, 200 miles north-west of Baghdad. The US said four bombs were used to destroy a house occupied by “terrorists” outside the town of Husaybah. Two further bombs destroyed a second house, said to be occupied by Abu Islam, described as “a known terrorist”.

Scratch at least one bad guy. However, I find it interesting, in a disturbing kind of way, that we have identified a tribe that supports foreign terrorists and haven’t hit it with an iron fist.

Sunni leap of faith

Iraq’s proposed constitution can be faulted for its contradictions and ambiguities. If those were its only problems, however, the outlook for this democracy-founding document would look a lot better than it now does, for constitutions the world over share these characteristics.

The greatest flaw is not what’s in this draft, but how it was handled: presented to Iraq’s National Assembly on Sunday over the objections of Sunni negotiators. In effect, one of the major groups in the three-legged stool that makes up Iraq is missing.

A constitution derives legitimacy and power from national consensus. The document hammered out in Baghdad this summer rightly declares it is “the people” who are “the source of authority” for constitutional rule of law. No consensus, no country.

Leaders of the minority Sunnis, who ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and who make up about 20 percent of Iraq’s population, now vow to wage a campaign of opposition to the constitution, which comes to voters for approval in October. If two-thirds of voters in three Iraqi provinces reject it, then a newly elected parliament would have to write a new document. With enough votes this fall, the Sunnis could indeed put the process back at square one.

But it’s not too late for a Sunni buy-in. And surprisingly, it’s the contradictory and ambiguous nature of the proposed constitution that could help bring Sunnis on board.

It’s an interesting look at the proposed Iraqi constitution and what it’s wording may mean to the Sunnis. Although I have not perused the constitution yet, I see that Sunnis as having two choices: mildly support the document and become more of a player on the scene or oppose it outright. Should they oppose it and it is still ratified, the Sunnis run the risk of perpetuating their errors of turning out in low numbers in January’s elections.

Arroyo likely to escape ousting

Lawmakers in the Philippines are due to resume their deliberations about which of three impeachment complaints to take up against President Gloria Arroyo.

They are expected to choose the weakest option, and are then highly likely to vote it down, effectively thwarting any attempt to oust her from office.

Mrs Arroyo faces accusations of corruption and electoral fraud.

She denies any wrongdoing but admits to a “lapse in judgement” in phoning an election officer during the 2004 poll.

This is truly looking like a shame. The Philippines are passing by an opportunity to remove a center of corruption. I will never forgive this woman, the Manila folder whose willingness to retreat from Iraq for one life while throwing money at the terrorists has quite probably cost lives, both innocent Iraqis and brave Americans.

Bush enters immigration debate

President Bush flew into the heart of the nation’s volatile debate over illegal immigration Monday and defended his administration’s efforts to control the nearby border with Mexico after a surge of criticism from across the political spectrum.

Two weeks after the Democratic governors of Arizona and New Mexico declared states of emergency along the border, Bush used a Medicare speech here to promise local residents an increasingly robust federal campaign that will deploy more agents and provide more detention space to stop those trying to sneak into the country.

“We have an obligation to enforce the borders,” Bush said to applause. “I understand it’s putting a strain on your resources. What I’m telling you is there’s a lot of people working hard to get the job done, but there is more we can do.”

Of course there’s more we can do. After this, I want a lot more done. Maybe it’s finally time we start considering our borders as one of the front lines in the war against radical Islamist terror.