Cindy Sheehan's Speech in Dallas

The Veterans for Peace National Convention wraps up today at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas. Thursday and Friday saw the vets check-in, and attend workshops that varied from Stan Goff’s ‘Gender & Militarism’ to ‘Speaking Truth to Power’ which featured Ann Wright, Coleen Rowley, and Jesselyn Radack. Friday night featured keynote speakers and entertainers at Lynch Hall, on campus. They all had great things to say, and Cindy Sheehan was no exception.

Here is what she had to say:

Cindy Sheehan: It’s so great to be here.

Last year when you guys had your convention in Boston, my son had only been dead a few months, and we were really honored because the Santa Barbara chapter took my daughter’s poem A Nation Rocked to Sleep, (and they did it again this year), and I remember Michael Cervantes, he brought the booklet over to our house and showed it to us, and I never dreamed in a year I’d be standing here in front of you as one of the speakers at your convention, I never dreamed I’d be doing this at all, but isn’t it weird what life hands you…

I never heard about Veterans for until, I can tell you the exact day I heard about VFP, it was May 4th, 2004, and my son had been dead exactly a month, and I was watching CNN, and something came on, it was a report on Arlington West in Santa Barbara, and we lived about 6 hours north of Santa Barbara, and it was the May 4th before Mother’s Day, which was May 8th, and VFP was going to put it up on Sunday, every Sunday, so I called my husband and I said, “There’s only one place I want to be on Mother’s Day this year, I want to be at Santa Barbara. I want to go and see Arlington West.”

When we went, the first time we went, there was a little over 700 crosses, now there’s over 1,800 crosses.

And I’m glad to hear everybody else’s words, because somebody’s gotta stop those lying bastards. Somebody has to stop them.

I got an email yesterday - - If you guys heard I just had a story published that talks about - - it’s called Where Do I Live?, it talks about an Iranian-American who got the shaft because a recruiter liked him, and the recruiter falsified his paperwork, so he ended up in prison. He’s been in prison since November without due process. Another mother whose son was found dead in Iraq, they told her that he died from a drug overdose. Three months later, they got the toxicology report; no drugs. She was devastated, she said, “I know my son, he did not do drugs.” She was told that her son’s wife and his battle buddies said in a report that yes, her son abused drugs in Iraq. But when she got that report it said categorically that no, he did not abuse drugs. So how did her son die?

And then there’s Kevin and Monica Benderman. Kevin did exactly the right thing and got 15 months in prison. Whereas like Dahr (Jamail) said, the war criminals in Washington, D.C., they don’t even lose a night’s sleep. Then we have this lying bastard, George Bush, taking a 5-week vacation in a time of war. You know what? I’m never going to get to enjoy another vacation, because of him.
My vacation probably - -this is really sad because I have a really cute dress I was going to wear to the banquet tomorrow night, but I’m either gonna be in jail or in a tent in Crawford, waiting until that jerk comes out and tells me why my son died."-from the post on AfterDowningStreet.org.