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'Peace Mom' Sheehan to release book
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-20 14:31
After spending scorching August days with hundreds of war protesters at her
makeshift camp near President Bush's Crawford ranch, Cindy Sheehan slipped away
each night to her tent or RV for a few quiet moments on her laptop.
Cindy Sheehan poses
for a magazine at her camp on the side of the road leading to President
Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas, in a file photo from Aug. 15, 2005.
After spending scorching August days with hundreds of war protesters at
her makeshift camp near President Bush's Crawford ranch, Sheehan slipped
away each night to her tent or RV for a few quiet moments on her laptop.
[AP] |
The words came easily as she opined about the war, U.S. leaders, her critics,
her supporters. And the tears started to flow no matter how many times she wrote
about her 24-year-old soldier son Casey, who died in Iraq last year.
"I miss him more every day. It seems the void in my life grows as time goes
on, and I realize I am never going to see him again or hear his voice," Sheehan
wrote. "I knew he was going to be a great man. I just had no idea how great he
was going to be or how much it was going to hurt me."
Now those journal entries are in her book, "Not One More Mother's Child," to
be released Wednesday. The paperback also contains some of her speeches to peace
groups earlier this year, letters to politicians and writings since leaving
Crawford.
"I never wrote anything more than a note to excuse my kids from school before
Casey was killed, so to see something I wrote in print with my name on it is
amazing," Sheehan told The Associated Press by phone from her home in Berkeley,
Calif.
Sheehan gained national attention during her 26-day vigil on a Texas roadside
near President Bush's ranch in August. She refused to move until the president
met with her or ended his vacation. That moved Arnie Kotler, the founder of a
Hawaii publishing company who saw news coverage and read Sheehan's Internet blog
entries from the protest.
"I thought, 'This is already a book. This is incredible,'" said Kotler of Koa
Books, which printed about 20,000 copies. "We got it done as quickly as we
could, and the deepest reason is to stop the war."
The White House did not return calls seeking comment on the book.
Sheehan shares details about Casey, her oldest child grew up to be an Eagle
scout who considered becoming a priest. He enlisted, Sheehan said, to give
something back to the country.
"He didn't enlist to be used and misused by a reckless commander in chief who
sent his troops to preemptively attack and occupy a country that was no imminent
threat or any threat to our country," she writes.
In a chapter called "The Peaceful Occupation of Crawford, Texas," Sheehan
chronicles the daily events of the protest, such as being bombarded with media
interviews, the campsite wedding of two peace activists and visits from
celebrities Martin Sheen, Joan Baez and the Rev. Al Sharpton. She also writes
about her critics.
"The right-wingers are really having a field day with me," she wrote. "...
What really hurts me the most is when people say that I am dishonoring Casey by
my protest in Crawford. By wanting our troops to come home alive and well, that
I am somehow not supporting them."
Sheehan plans to go on a book tour, but first she wants to resume her protest
in Crawford this week as Bush spends Thanksgiving at his ranch.
"The Camp Casey movement will not die until we have a genuine accounting of
the truth and until our troops are brought home," she wrote. "Get used to it,
George. We are not going away."
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