Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan Speaks Out in Indiana

Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan Speaks Out in Indiana

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/13/508 /

Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan Speaks Out in Indiana
by Margaret Fosmoe

SOUTH BEND — A day after the Pentagon announced soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will serve longer tours of duty, peace activist Cindy Sheehan urged Americans to make personal sacrifices to help end the war.”You need to reach deep down inside yourself and figure out what more you can do,” Sheehan said Thursday during a speech at Saint Mary’s College. “If we want to have true and lasting peace, we all have to sacrifice.”

Sheehan became well known in 2005 after she publicly demanded that President Bush be held accountable for the death of her son, Casey Sheehan, a soldier who was killed in the Iraq war.

“If the United States hadn’t launched its war of aggression against Iraq, our soldiers wouldn’t be dying, the people of Iraq wouldn’t be dying,” said Sheehan, who is harshly critical of the president.

“There really hasn’t been anyone so utterly incompetent, so utterly unqualified for the position he is in,” she said of Bush.An audience of about 300 people greeted her speech with repeated applause and cheers.

The United States, Iraq and the world would be better off if U.S. troops immediately withdrew from Iraq, said Sheehan, who was dressed in jeans and a green shirt adorned with peace signs.

“The opposition in Iraq has the right — no matter how painful this is for me to say — they have the right to oppose an occupation,” Sheehan said, comparing the U.S. occupation to British control in North America before the American Revolution. “We overthrew that occupation,” she said.

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