“Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol”
Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother who became a figurehead for the US anti-war movement, is abandoning her fight after growing disenchanted with the campaign.
She has camped outside President Bush’s ranch since 2005, demanding a meeting over the death of her son in Iraq.
But announcing the end of her campaign, she also hit out at Democrats and anti-war campaigners who put “personal egos above peace and human life”.
She said she had sacrificed her health, her marriage and her finances.
In a letter on the Daily Kos website titled Good Riddance Attention Whore – a reference to the abuse she says she has suffered, Ms Sheehan said: “I am going to take whatever I have left and go home.
“I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost.”Cindy Sheehan became a “postergirl” for the US anti-war movement after she set up her protest camp outside the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas in August 2005.
“I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.”
She said her son Casey, who died in Baghdad in April 2004, was “killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think.
“Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6699781.stm