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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (245762)	8/12/2005 1:39:21 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576601

Bush ducks mother of dead soldierPresident using helicopter to enter, leave Texas ranch to avoid confrontation By ALAN FREEMAN Friday, August 12, 2005 Updated at 3:45 AM EDT From Friday's Globe and Mail Washington — As the Iraq war continues to produce growing U.S. casualties and shrinking public support, President George W. Bush was forced yesterday to confront the protest of a grieving mother of a soldier killed in the war. But he still won't meet her. As Cindy Sheehan camped out on a road leading to Mr. Bush's ranch near Crawford, Tex., for the sixth consecutive day, insisting she wants to speak to the President personally, Mr. Bush said he sympathizes with her plight, but rejected her call to pull the troops out of Iraq. Ms. Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in an ambush in Sadr City, Baghdad's sprawling Shia neighbourhood, last year, just five days after he arrived in Iraq. "I begged him not to go," says Ms. Sheehan, 48, who travelled from her home in California to try to speak with Mr. Bush as he spends his summer vacation at his Prairie Chapel Ranch. "I said, 'I'll take you to Canada,' but he said, 'Mom, I have to go. It's my duty. My buddies are going.' Advertisements "I don't believe his phony excuses for the war," Ms. Sheehan has said of the President. She said she believes the war is really about oil and making Mr. Bush's friends richer. "I want him to tell me why my son died." Anti-war activists are converging on Crawford, eager to seize on Ms. Sheehan's newfound notoriety and telegenic appeal to get their message across. On Saturday, Mr. Bush dispatched deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin to meet with her to try to defuse the situation, but it just gave Ms. Sheehan more attention. Mr. Hadley said that Mr. Bush is very sensitive to the losses being sustained by military families, pointing out that he has already met privately with the families of more than 200 of the fallen. "He believes that they are engaged in a noble cause and it's terribly important for the safety and security of our country. And he respects her views, but respectfully disagrees." Yesterday, Mr. Bush felt obliged to respond himself. "She feels strongly about her position and she has every right in the world to say what she believes," Mr. Bush told a news conference. "And I thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is: Get out of Iraq now. And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so." Mr. Bush said he grieves for every death in Iraq. "It breaks my heart to think about a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place." Yet there was no sign Mr. Bush intends to meet Ms. Sheehan. In fact, there were reports he is travelling solely by helicopter when he leaves the ranch in an effort to avoid racing past the protester in a limousine. "The President says he feels compassion for me," Ms. Sheehan said, "but the best way to show that compassion is by meeting with me and the other mothers and families who are here. "All we're asking is that he sacrifice an hour out of his five-week vacation to talk to us before the next mother loses her son in Iraq." Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who has studied Mr. Bush's rise, said: "For him, meeting this woman face to face would be blinking. His whole game is to be confident and to appear never to doubt and never to waiver. It's this idea of determination." And unlike government leaders in a parliamentary system who are challenged directly by their political opponents, Mr. Bush can easily shelter himself from such confrontations. "He would not trust himself in a face-to-face meeting and neither would his staff. These guys like control," said Prof. Jillson, who added that Ms. Sheehan's protest in itself may not be that significant but it comes at a time when many Americans are reconsidering their views of the Iraq war. Approval of Mr. Bush's handling of the conflict has dropped to as little as 34 per cent of people surveyed, according to a recent poll conducted for Newsweek magazine. But only 33 per cent of Americans say the solution is withdrawing all troops, according to a recent Gallup Poll. Another 23 per cent say some of the troops should be withdrawn while 41 per cent say troop levels should remain the same or be increased. Ms. Sheehan's protest comes at a particularly bloody time for U.S. troops in the war as roadside bombs aimed at patrolling soldiers have become increasingly sophisticated and lethal. According to Associated Press, at least 1,841 American troops have died in the war since March, 2003, including 37 since the beginning of August. At his news conference, Mr. Bush said he strongly disagrees with those calling for troop withdrawal. "Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy ..... [that] the United States is weak and all we've got to do is intimidate and they'll leave." theglobeandmail.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (245762)	8/12/2005 1:44:01 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576601

Snap! ********************************************************** Mother begs for end to killing** Atlantan: 'It's too late for my son' By ANNA VARELA The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 08/12/05 Mary Ann MacCombie didn't protest Vietnam. She was in her early 20s and wasn't sure she understood that war well enough to take a stand. And she didn't know anybody who died there. When the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, she was "cautiously supportive." And when her son's Army unit joined the fight, she thought it would be like the Gulf War in 1991 — few casualties, "in and out." In April 2004, MacCombie's son was killed in Iraq. Suddenly the war became personal. On Thursday, two years after the invasion of Iraq, MacCombie spoke out at an anti-war demonstration for the first time. It took her more than a year to trust herself to talk about her son without breaking down, a year spent in a state of shock and coping with the bureaucratic details that follow death in a faraway place. She joined about three dozen protesters who gathered in front of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Decatur to show support for Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who lost a son in Iraq and has camped out on a road leading to President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is vacationing. Sheehan has vowed to stay until he meets with her personally. MacCombie read a speech she wrote ahead of time because she didn't think she could speak off the cuff. "It's too late for my son," she said, "but not for his best friend and thousands of their fellow soldiers and Marines. Now is the right time, the right place, the right mission — to bring our troops home." Afterward, MacCombie admitted she was nervous. She knows she shook a little during her speech. But she thought she did OK, and she's willing to do it again. She's thinking about going to Texas to join Sheehan. When Sgt. Ryan Montgomery Campbell settled in for his yearlong tour of duty, MacCombie supported her son by sending video games, music CDs and a laptop computer, making sure his bills got paid, and e-mailing him regularly. The 25-year-old swapped gossip with his mother about friends back home in Kirksville, Mo. They talked about the intense heat of the Baghdad summer and the college classes she was taking. Toward the end of the tour, Campbell e-mailed his mother to suggest she meet him at his base in Europe so they could see Germany and Spain together. But a few days before he was to leave Iraq in April 2004, he e-mailed her with bad news: The Army had ordered his unit to stay for four more months. Morale 'at an all-time low' The extension was a shock. The soldiers in his unit had already packed and shipped their personal items to their home base in Germany. Campbell dropped plans to re-enlist, intentions based on assurances that he could be stationed in Hawaii. Now, he wrote his mother, he couldn't trust the Army to keep its word. On April 10, 2004, he wrote: "Well, the days are just dragging by over here ... before at least there was something to look forward to. ... I continue to hate this place. I hate the Army." He e-mailed his sister, Brooke Campbell, and urged her not to vote for Bush. On April 26 he sent his sister another e-mail, noting that he was pulling 16-hour workdays providing security for an engineering unit assigned to dig up roadsides where Iraqi insurgents often hid bombs. "My morale is at an all-time low," he wrote, "and the days are hard. Our mission is more dangerous than ever before." On April 28, Campbell called his mother twice, sounding very discouraged. She didn't know how to console him. The next day, he was killed by a suicide bomber along with seven other soldiers from his unit. Mom's Bush ranch protest MacCombie buried her son in Arlington National Cemetery on May 11, 2004. The next week she moved to Atlanta to be closer to Brooke, a graduate student at Emory University. MacCombie had remained in Kirksville so Ryan would have a home to return to. When he died, there was no point staying there, she decided. She dropped out of college because she didn't have the heart to go on. She lives in a rented duplex in Virginia-Highland and drives the red Jeep Wrangler her son bought on his last two-week leave home. At 59, she thinks she probably looks silly in "his dream car," but it makes her feel closer to her son. MacCombie has been slower to go public with her opposition to the war than her daughter. Brooke, 29, appeared in an anti-Bush TV ad that was aired in swing states during the 2004 election campaign. MacCombie long ago concluded the president's stated reasons for going to war in Iraq were untrue. One of her first steps toward protest came July 22, when Bush visited Atlanta to promote his Social Security plan and the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. She stood silently in a black T-shirt with "Bush Lied" on the front and "They Died" on the back. Names of U.S. troops who died in the war cover both sides of the shirt. Her son's name runs across the middle of the B in "Bush." She is monitoring the situation in Texas, where news reports Thursday said more than 50 war protesters had joined Sheehan. Rumors were flying that Sheehan would be arrested. If that happens, MacCombie is ready to take her place to show Bush that the California mother "speaks for a lot of us." Several opinion polls show support for the war has slipped. In a USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll released this week, 56 percent of Americans surveyed said the war was going badly. The same poll asked if they supported sending more troops, keeping troop levels the same, a partial pullout or a complete pullout. The leading choice was complete withdrawal, with 33 percent favoring that option. Twenty-three percent supported a partial withdrawal. MacCombie rejects the idea that mothers like her endanger the troops by speaking out. She feels they are already demoralized and nothing she says will put them in greater danger than they already face. She also knows that many people, including some mothers who have lost children in Iraq, see her criticism as bringing dishonor to the soldiers who have died. She said she respects their feelings and hopes they will respect hers. She thinks about the mothers whose sons and daughters are still fighting. More than a thousand U.S. soldiers and Marines have been killed in Iraq since her son died. "How many is enough?" she asks. "Maybe it's going to take more speaking out. ... It just seems to be the right time for me personally." And, she notes sadly, she didn't speak up during Vietnam. ajc.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (245762)	8/12/2005 3:31:18 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576601

Sunnis reject calls for federal Iraq Staff and agencies Friday August 12, 2005 Sunni Arab leaders today rejected Shia calls for a federal Iraq, saying the proposal would fracture the country along religious and ethnic lines. The minority Sunnis, who were dominant under former president Saddam Hussein, condemned proposals for an autonomous southern region which would raise the prospect of an oil-rich fiefdom dominated by Muslim clerics. With politicians battling to beat Monday's deadline for agreeing to a new national constitution, Sunnis said plans to give the south a similar level of autonomy as that planned for northern Kurdish regions were unacceptable. "We reject it wherever it is, whether in the north or in the south, but we accept the Kurdish region as it was before the war," said Kamal Hamdoun, a Sunni member of the committee drafting the constitution. "The aim of federalism is to divide Iraq into ethnic and sectarian areas. We will cling to our stance of rejecting this." Sunni Arabs fear they will lose out on oil revenues if the country is split into federal zones, leaving them with the "sands of Anbar", a vast, barren central province. Sunni clerics used Friday prayers to urge followers to vote against any constitution likely to lead to Iraq's break-up. "We, in this country, don't want federalism because we are a unified nation in this country and we feel that Iraq with all it's elements is for all [of us]," Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaie, of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, told worshippers at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque. Yesterday, the head of the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), one of the main ruling parties, called for a "Shiastan" encompassing the Gulf oilfields and almost half of Iraq's 26 million population. "Regarding federalism, we think it is necessary to form one entire region in the south," Abdul Aziz al-Hakim told a rally in the Shia holy city of Najaf. The Sciri's cleric leaders have strong ties to Iran's theocracy and dominate the Shia bloc, which rules in coalition with the largely secular Kurds. Some analysts suggested the call for southern autonomy was a negotiating ploy to gain leverage for making Islam the main source of legislation. "We were surprised with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim's declarations," said Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni member of the commission drafting the constitution. "Time is running out and such declarations should be much more calm. We don't have time for such manoeuvres." Mr Mutlaq and other Sunnis had suggested that a decision on federalism should be delayed until a new parliament is elected in December. That parliament is expected to have more Sunni Arab members than the current one because many Sunnis boycotted last January's election. The incorporation of Sunni Arabs into the political process is seen as central to undermining the insurgency. Some leading Shias today appeared to reject the notion of southern autonomy being written into the constitution. "The idea is for federal regions in the centre and in the south, but it will not be decided until after the constitution is done," said a Sciri member of the drafting panel, Saad Qindeel. The Kurds have demanded federalism to maintain control over three northern provinces and also want authority over Kirkuk, from which thousands of Kurds were expelled by Saddam. Government officials urged compromise after Mr Hakim's speech. "Every group is saying that they have stands that they cannot abandon because they are 'red lines', but in the end everyone is going to make some concessions," presidential spokesman Kamran Qaradaghi said last night. US pressure to produce a constitution on time and rein in the extent of any Islamic identity of the state has been strong, with the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, a prominent figure on the sidelines of the talks. guardian.co.uk