Cindy Sheehan gets to sees the president, up close and personal



This was from Democracy Now about a week ago, Wednesday, June 29th, 2005.

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest on the line with us in Washington is Cindy Sheehan. She is the mother of Casey, who died in Iraq last year.... Cindy I did want to ask you right before the Fort Bragg address of President Bush, he met with family members who lost loved ones in Iraq. Have you been able to meet with Bush administration officials?

CINDY SHEEHAN: Actually, I met with the President in June of 2004, a couple of months after my son was killed. We were summoned up to Fort Irwin, Washington state, to have a sit down with the president. So my entire family went. And I was on CNN last night with Larry King talking about this, and there was another mother who had met with him, and she said that she supports the war and the President, and she said he was so warm and everything and gentle and kind, and when my family and I met with him, I met a man who had no compassion in him. He had no heart. Like Karen said, he cares nothing about us. We tried to show him pictures of Casey. He wouldn't look at them. He wouldn't even acknowledge Casey's name. He called me “Mom” through the entire visit. He acted like we were at a tea party, like it was something fun, that we should just be so pleased that we got to meet with the President who killed our son.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you say to him?

CINDY SHEEHAN: The first thing, he came up to me, and he goes, “Mom, I can't imagine your loss. I can't imagine losing a loved one, you know, whether it be a mother, a father, a sister or brother.” And I stopped him, and I said, “You have two children. Try to imagine them being killed in a war. How would that make you feel?” And he got a little bit of -- just a little bit of human flicker in his eye, like he might be connected for a minute, because this is a man that's disconnected from humanity. And he had just got a little flicker in his eye, and I said, “Trust me, you don't want to go there.” And you know what he told me? He goes, “You're right, I don't.” And so I said, “Well, thank you for putting me there.”

And then he moved on to the next person, and then a little while later we were talking, and he went up to my oldest daughter, and he said, “I wish I could bring back your loved one to replace the hole in your heart.” And she goes, “Yeah, so do we.” And he gave her the dirtiest look and turned his back on her and ignored her for the rest of the meeting. And then a little later on in the meeting, I said, “Why were we invited here? We didn't vote for you in 2000, and we're certainly not going to vote for you in 2004.” And he said, “It's not about politics,” which is just bologna, because he went through the campaign trail, and last night he said he meets with families, and we say that we’re praying for him and stuff like that.

You know, that’s not -- that wasn't our experience. And everybody else I’ve talked to who have met with him have about the same experiences I do. He comes in, says I want to extend the gratitude of the nation and express my condolences, but he says it, and his eyes don't convey that, his heart doesn't convey that. We felt – we left our meeting with him feeling worse than when we walked in, feeling more determined to stop the madness in Iraq than before.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Cindy Sheehan, lost her son Casey in Iraq, did meet with President Bush.