Blumenthal: The Vactioner (Bush Woes)

[Starfury]

The vacationer

While the president worries about restoring "balance" to his life, Americans are worried by stratospheric gas prices and growing fed up with the war in Iraq.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Aug. 18, 2005 | Now is the summer of our discontent, made lowering winter by this sun of Crawford.

President Bush capers nimbly through his bicycle rides, fishing, brush clearing, attending a Little League baseball game and holding a merry meeting with his adoring and adored Rangers and Pioneers, his largest political contributors. His national security team comes and goes praising the nonexistent Iraqi constitution. He bestows souvenir pens on congressional leaders festively gathered around him, signing an energy bill that provides new loopholes for oil companies awash in windfall profits and drastically scales back measures for conservation as the price of petroleum skyrockets to near-record levels.

Home on the range more than the deer and the antelope play. Near a drainage ditch by the road leading to Prairie Chapel, the president's ranch, the mother of a dead soldier has pitched a tent. Cindy Sheehan has refused to leave until she is granted an audience with the president. Her son, 24-year-old Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, a Humvee mechanic, was killed in Baghdad's Sadr City on April 4, 2004, and she calls her makeshift vigil in memoriam "Camp Casey." Her previous meeting with Bush has only impelled her to seek the satisfaction of another one. "He wouldn't look at the pictures of Casey," she said. "He didn't even know Casey's name. He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, 'So who are we honoring here?' He didn't even know Casey's name. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn't even call him 'him' or 'he.' He called him 'your loved one.' Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject."

Bush has sent out emissaries, including his national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, to reason with her, but she remains adamant. Her emotional drama and outspoken opposition to the Iraq war have become daily features in newspapers and on the network television news. Every twist in her standoff provides grist for expanded coverage. One of Bush's neighbors has offered Sheehan his ranch as a more commodious base. Yet another fired his shotgun in the air to startle and frighten her. Still another, the president of the local gun club, drove his pickup truck over a memorial of small white wooden crosses and American flags constructed by Sheehan and her supporters to honor the approximately 1,860 soldiers fallen so far; he was arrested for criminal mischief.

Other bereaved parents of dead soldiers have suddenly begun speaking out and receiving respectful media attention, especially in their home states. In Ohio, Paul Schroeder, the father of Lance Cpl. Edward Schroeder II, killed two weeks ago along with 15 other Marines from Ohio, called a press conference in front of his Cleveland home. "Our comments are not just those of grieving parents," he said. "They are based on anger, Mr. President, not grief. Anger is an honest emotion when someone's family has been violated." His wife, Rosemary, accused Bush of failure: "Whether he leads them out by putting more troops on the ground or pulling them out -- he can't just let it continue." Before Sheehan's vigil, public support of Bush's Iraq policy had plummeted to 34 percent.

(...)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/08/18/bush_woes/print.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. Approval Rating heading for the 20's