Sheehan offers refuge to war deserters: ... makes property available near Bush r...

HELL YES, GOOD FOR YOU CINDY SHEENAN, STANDING UP FOR YOU COVICTIONS, WAY TO GO
Friday, August 11, 2006

Sheehan offers refuge to war deserters
Activist makes property available near Bush ranch

By MIKE BARBER
P-I REPORTER

(Editor's Note: This story has been altered. U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, a psychiatrist, served in the Navy in California during the Vietnam War. The original version of this story misstated where he served.)

It was at the Veterans for Peace national convention in Dallas last year that Cindy Sheehan says she was galvanized to seek a meeting with President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.

The result was a 26-day sit-down protest near Bush's ranch that attracted common folk and luminaries from across the nation, rejuvenating the anti-war movement.


Sheehan and Paterson
Gilbert W. Arias / P-I
Anti-war activists Cindy Sheehan and Jeff Paterson at the Veterans for Peace convention at the University of Washington.

On Thursday, Sheehan, who became a peace activist after her soldier son, Casey, was killed in Iraq in 2004, was at the Veterans for Peace national convention at the University of Washington.

Now almost 40 days into her fast supporting war resisters and their families, Sheehan, though weak, announced that she is offering land she bought in Crawford near Bush's ranch as a refuge for U.S. troops who desert to resist the war in Iraq.

"What is the noble cause that my son died for in Iraq?" Sheehan asked, echoing her remarks from last year as she spoke Thursday on the steps of the HUB on the UW campus.

Joined by conscientious objectors from the Vietnam War, the 1991 Persian Gulf War and Iraq, Sheehan said she decided to offer her land because 12,000 more U.S. troops are being deployed to Iraq, calling the war "this nightmare, and it's breaking my heart."

Sheehan is among what Veterans for Peace leaders bill as an "all-star cast of war resisters" in Seattle this week. At least 425 of its 5,000 membership signed up for the convention, which opened Thursday with calls for disengagement by the United States in Iraq and Israel in Lebanon.


Among the markers
Gilbert W. Arias / P-I
Army veteran Steve Mortillo searches for fallen friends among grave markers on display outside of the HUB at the University of Washington on Thursday. Mortillo, of New Jersey, served in Iraq in 2004-05. He is now a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and was participating in a Veterans for Peace convention. Mortillo said the names of 12 of his friends who were killed in Iraq were on the markers.

Gray-haired veterans from the Vietnam War joined fresh-faced veterans from the current war. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, a Navy psychiatrist who served in the Navy in California during the Vietnam War and an early opponent of the war in Iraq, is slated to speak to the group today.
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