Talk Nation Radio’s Dori Smith interviews some of the people at Camp Casey, Cindy Sheehan’s current home near bush’s vacation spa in Crawford Texas.

“It’s time for America to wake up, if they don’t realize it America has already woken up, this is big.” Leeta Ruger, Military Families Speak Out.

“These folks are on the defensive, and they deserve what’s coming to them. They should be held accountable, they should be asked the tough questions, and it took a mother like Cindy Sheehan to come to the scene, to draw a line, and say enough is enough.” Hadi Jawad, Crawford Peace House

Talk Nation Radio Special Broadcast: An Uninvited Guest at Bush’s Press Conference

She was not invited to Bush’s Crawford Press Conference August 11, 2005, but Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace managed to become the focus of it anyway. The heat was on the President as the media brought up the issue of peace activists and Sheehan camped down the road. I phoned the site and interviewed Leeta Ruger, who is in Crawford with Sheehan and Military Families Against the War Hadi Jawal, the Co-founder of the Crawford Peace House, as he tries to provide food and water for a growing crowd there.

They had not yet heard that Cindy Sheehan and their growing group had dominated CNN’s coverage of the President’s press conference from Crawford, August 11, 2005.

This is a special Talk Nation Radio Interview Audio on that press conference and growing U.S. support for Sheehan.

Intro: This is Dori Smith with a special Talk Nation Radio broadcast.

Members of Gold Star Families and Military Families Speak Out are in Crawford Texas to support Cindy Sheehan in her efforts to speak with the President. Sheehan has become an outspoken critic of the war. She says she regrets not speaking out against it soon enough to change the mind of her son Casey who was killed in Iraq last year. Sheehan, and a growing crowd of supporters and members of the Press are less than four miles away from Bush’s Crawford ranch.

At a press conference in the hot Texas sun President Bush was flanked by Vice President Dick Cheney looking warm in a khaki suit, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was also said to be there. The President said, “My position is clear and therefore the position of this government is clear.” Yet, Cindy Sheehan has been gaining support in America. If the White House and President Bush are worried about her presence down the road, they are right to be worried. “Cindy Sheehan” was the most blogged name or topic on the internet August 11, 2005 according to AP.

Some 40 members of Congress have also supported Sheehan; they urge the President to meet with her. And average Americans are taking notice too. AP reported that a trucker listening to a report about Sheehan on the radio while in Georgia changed his route and headed to Texas to support her.

(“Stop loss” is the draft. People call it the backdoor draft. No it is the draft. Once these kids are over there they can’t get out, they can’t get home.” (Leeta Ruger, Military Families Speak Out.)

Smith: Leeta Ruger with Military Families Speak Out joins us to talk about why she’s in Crawford to support Cindy Sheehan, and why she is worried about her relatives who are now facing “stop loss” and the Military’s demand that they return to Iraq.

Leeta Ruger: OK, my name is Leeta Ruger. I’m a member of Military Families Speak Out, an organization that has 2200 Military family members. We’re here in Crawford Texas in a show of support for Cindy Sheehan in her vigil where she is asking the President to meet with her so she can ask why our loved ones are at war, why her son died, her son Casey Sheehan. So we’re here, on the side of the road, in a ditch in Crawford Texas in support of Cindy.

Smith: The President was asked about Cindy Sheehan being down the road and it was in the middle of his discussion about Iraq and Iran and U.S. policy. Are you aware of the President’s press conference?

Leeta Ruger: No I’m not because I’m out of connection with TV, internet or anything. What did he say?

Smith: The President was in a fairly chaotic state today. He was flanked by Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice. He contradicted his own generals. General Casey a few days ago did say that we would see a troop withdrawal, a significant troop withdrawal by spring. So here we had the President contradicting him. He then said in answer to a question about whether or not there would be a troop increase that this too was speculation but that it’s important to plan and think down the road. And I couldn’t help but think of you when he said that, literally down the road.

Leeta Ruger: Well, we are, we are down the road with our thousand crosses. I hope he gets a chance to see those, well he won’t be driving by, but the people that are, Secret Service and administrative staff. I hope they get to see that and report back to him that he has a thousand crosses just down the road from him.

Leeta Ruger: I am intrigued by what he had to say.

Smith: It was a very odd moment, with the Vice President looking very warm and uncomfortable, and the President sort of at a loss for words. And when the question did come: When you are talking about families that have lost loved ones are you talking about Cindy Sheehan? –He said that he sympathizes with all of the grieving families and wants to honor their loved ones, and then he did say directly, “I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan, she feels strongly about her position and she has every right to say what she believes, this is America.”

Now he said he had he thought long and hard about her position, and he had heard that position from others, “get out of Iraq now,” but he did say that he disagreed with her.

Leeta Ruger: For me it’s very positive that he’s even addressed it. That’s very encouraging. That means that Cindy Sheehan is known to him, whether, how that happened whether somebody told him or he learned it at this press conference; I’d really be hard pressed to believe his staff wouldn’t let him know. We’ve been here three days, well longer than that. She started this on Saturday, so she’s been down the road five days. And I would be hard pressed to believe that somebody hasn’t clued him in that she’s just down the road from his ranch when he’s here on vacation. Of course the troops are still fighting and dying, but he’s on vacation.

If he’s just learning about it at a press conference with a reporter asking him a question, that’s astonishing, but that he responded is almost positive. Cindy is not going to be satisfied with that answer and our vigil won’t end with this. This is a mobilized, organic, spontaneous movement. This is not something that was orchestrated and the outpouring from the country in general, from all the states, and even globally across other nations is phenomenal. It’s just phenomenal.

Smith: I understand that Cindy did meet with Bush’s National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley?

Leeta Ruger: They came out to talk with her, yes.

Smith: Just a thought that perhaps he’s told the President that there are these very well spoken people down the road who are demanding some answers about the war.

Leeta Ruger: Well, sending aids out and having them report back and then not making a comment on it (in his statement to the press) is not really an acknowledgement of the mother of a fallen soldier. Ignoring the situation does not respect the situation.

Smith: Tell me a little bit more about this whole effort. Did it start out small and then kind of grow because I know today “Cindy Sheehan” is the most heavily entered search topic of the day? –The way it seemed to start out it was in the blogosphere and then some of the networks started asking, “does the blogosphere like Cindy Sheehan?” and the next thing we knew there was this issue of people slamming her because they said she was a quote, “flip flopper” unquote.

Leeta Ruger: Yeah, but you are of course giving us the negative side. I don’t think that media fully appreciates the positive side of this yet because it’s amazing. She thought of the idea, she sent it out as an email, they were down here for another reason and she moved here to Crawford, and it began and the outpouring began. Media obviously didn’t know about it right away because it was so spontaneous. There were no press releases that said we were going to do this, well there was actually probably the night before in the blogosphere, but this didn’t go through the usual channels where there was all kinds of notification.

So it was blogged heavily in the blogosphere. Oh yes it was very heavily blogged and the support that’s coming out is because people have heard it from the internet and are gradually starting to hear it now on the radio and the TV and they are captured with the idea. It’s the idea that Cindy Sheehan sacrificed to this nation and is asking the very simple question, “why”. It transcends. It just reaches across all kinds of lines here. So we see quite a different picture than what is being portrayed about comments about Cindy or opinions about what she is doing. -It’s time for America to wake up, if they don’t realize it America has already woken up, this is big.

Smith: When people first said that Drudge was talking about her as a “flip flopper” my first response was, well, that’s what she is after. She wants people to flip flop on this one, she wants people to change their minds. And I just wondered about your story, and your response to this whole issue of people changing their minds about this war?

Leeta Ruger: Well I have two loved ones, a Son-in-law. They have already served in Iraq. They are Iraq veterans. And they are both under stop loss orders for repeat deployment. So the will be going back to Iraq very shortly with their division, the First Armored, and the First Armored is “stop loss”. So, I’ve been at this Iraq war for as long as it’s been going on because it had no logic to begin with, and that’s proven to be true. So what Cindy is doing in terms of getting the attention of the American public that says, you may have had these opinions a year ago, but isn’t it time to reexamine your position? And isn’t it time to ask the President to reexamine his position and give us truth on it rather than the rhetoric that got us into it in the first place? -And deal with it realistically.

Smith: Now the President has again said that the war is going well, but I’ve just read reports from the U.S. Military that says we are not making much progress training Iraqis.

Leeta Ruger: The President continues to say that they are doing well in Iraq. We the Military Families who have deployed loved ones know a very different truth. And we do know a truth that we learn directly from our troops. It’s not going well. They tell us it’s not going well. I don’t know why the Administration keeps trying to convince America it’s going well. And the importance of that is, it’s not fooling anybody anymore.

This vigil with Cindy Sheehan; heartfelt by people who are coming from everywhere spontaneously -it’s not going to fly anymore, it’s just not going to fly. And as far as Iraqi troops being under prepared our troops are still under prepared. They are still going in with unarmored Humvees. Marines that were killed this month were in an unarmored Humvee, wasn’t that addressed with Rumsfeld some time ago? And yet again they are still in under-armored Humvees still having to put the plates on?

They don’t have enough troops on the ground. They are carrying the war alone. They in my opinion have been abandoned by the American public as have military’s families who have had to carry this disproportionate war themselves. So I’m thrilled to see this get American attention. It needs discourse, it needs public dialogue.

Smith: Just talk about “stop loss” finally because the President made a point of talking about the army as a “volunteer army.”

Leeta Ruger: It’s not, oh my gosh. Thank you for the opportunity. It stopped being a volunteer army a year ago. With “stop loss,” repeat deployments activating the National Guard and the reserve, the military is confined and constrained to do what the President orders or authorizes. They have done all they can do. No more can be done. The recruiting is seriously down. “Stop loss” is the draft. People call it the “backdoor draft” well it is the draft.

Once these kids are over there they can’t get out, they can’t get home. It’s pulling at the foundation of families because they come home, they are home for a few months, they are training that whole time for redeployment to Iraq, they get very little solid time with their families to bond, re-bond, come back together, and then they are going to fly out. They have got an eighteen month window of uncertainty as to where they are going to be with the stop loss. Once stop loss is issued its an eighteen month count for them, so they don’t know where they are going to be, how long the tour is going to be. There is a three month window before and after. It’s not volunteer, it stopped being volunteer a year ago.

Smith: How have you been feeling? What have you been going through as you have had to worry about family and worry about other people’s family in Iraq? What is it doing to you as a person?

Leeta Ruger: Well, it has certainly mobilized me into a single focus issue for the last two and a half years. It has alienated certain amounts of our social life because if folks don’t know about Iraq I’m obviously going to want to tell them what’s at stake here and sometimes folks don’t want to hear it so they don’t want to come around too much. And it’s been difficult for me to hear who went shopping at the mall when I just heard for example that 7 of the Rangers fell or 11 of the Marines fell.

So it has created quite a different environment for me, but I’m not concerned about that because when the war is over and the troops come home life will resume as normal and America will heal. And America is not yet at a place where it could begin to entertain that. But what Cindy is doing is the beginning of so many different aspects, and of all of the issues kind of culminating in a convergence. So healing will begin with America reaching out to what Cindy is doing right now. And I think it also reflects that there are some feelings of powerlessness? Or we wouldn’t have this spontaneous outpouring. It’s incredible, it’s just incredible.

Smith: Now again the Press in talking with the President today did ask him about “anti-war advocates camped outside,” and it seemed to be a touchy subject and to make them uncomfortable. But what I would add is that the discomfort may be in part due to what could be coming next. What else is planned that you know about, I mean where does the Gold Star Family effort and Cindy Sheehan and others like you –where do you go from here?

Leeta Ruger: You know, like I said, it’s very spontaneous, organic, it’s growing of its own accord. We will grow with it. Cindy does not intend to withdraw her vigil and I’m sure that if the President chooses not to address Cindy directly through the month of August there will be some sort of evolution of this momentum. So I would think that the Administration does need to address, not just the fact that Cindy is out there, but that military families are standing with her and that people from across the states and even out of the country are coming to stand with her. That represents something. It’s not your ordinary somebody holding a rally to claim anti war, in fact I really resent the “anti war”–Military families are not typically anti war. The questionable war of Iraq is what they want to focus on. So I kind of don’t like that anti war label because it tries to diminish or minimize the serious efforts of military families all across this nation. It’s very disrespectful to the troops.

Smith: Thanks so much for joining us.

Leeta Ruger: Thank you for asking very provoking questions and the opportunity. I very much appreciate it.

Leeta Ruger with Military Families Speak Out is in Crawford Texas to support Cindy Sheehan. Hadi Jawad is one of the founders of the Crawford Peace House in Texas. The Peace House is hosting Cindy Sheehan and now Jawad is helping to organize food and water for a growing crowd. I asked him to talk about the President’s statements that he wants to offer comfort to parents of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and honor their sons and daughters.

Smith: Did you see the President’s press conference earlier today?

Hadi Jawad: I didn’t actually I was busy organizing over here, making sure people were fed and watered and rested and that kind of stuff. It’s a blistering hot day here in Texas.

Smith: Can you comment just on that kind of thing being said by the President right now?

Hadi Jawad: I think what we should hear right now is that the U.S. troops are coming home. If he wants to do honor to our soldiers the President should be saying that the United States will withdraw all of its support, all of its troops in Iraq. This is more, you know, “continuing staying on the course,” rhetoric. “We have to finish the job”, or “finish the mission,” rhetoric that we have continued to hear from the Administration while reality tells us that Iraq has turned into a failed state because of the presence of United States military troops in Iraq. And the solution to the present conflict in Iraq, the quagmire that Iraq is becoming, is a swift withdrawal of U.S. troops and bringing all of the Casey Sheehan’s that are left in Iraq back home to their mothers and their fathers, their loved ones and their families.

Smith: The President said his, “position on Iraq is clear therefore, the position of this government is clear.” Yet, many members of Congress appear to have signed a letter urging him to meet with Cindy Sheehan in a show of support. Would you say this government’s position is clear at this point? What do you make of that kind of statement?

Hadi Jawad: Are you referring to what the Congress is asking?

Smith: I saw a long list of members of Congress that have signed a letter urging the President to meet with Cindy Sheehan.

Hadi Jawad: I think it’s very nice that Congress if finally getting behind Ms. Sheehan, because Congress so far has rubber stamped the war policies of this administration. And Ms. Sheehan has been doing the job that lawmakers should have been doing all along, which is to ask the hard questions. Nobody in this country including the media, sorry to say people like yourself; have done their job so far. It had to be a grieving mother who has given the sacrifice of her son to finally stand up and say enough is enough, and start demanding answers to some very difficult questions that the Administration has eluded for the past three years that we have been in Iraq.

Smith: Mr. Jawad, I was witness to a rather chaotic press conference. The Vice President stood there in a jacket, and others were there in jackets, and Condoleezza Rice was there, and the whole scene looked fairly uncomfortable. It did seem that Cindy Sheehan, a mother who has lost her son in Iraq has put the pressure on. In fact, the President was asked a question directly about Ms. Sheehan and others camped down the road in tents hoping to talk with him. What do you make of the Press that she has been getting because this may well be one of the first times that he’s been asked this question during a press conference with Ms. Sheehan camped down the road from his vacation home in Texas?

Hadi Jawad: Actually, we are all so relieved that finally the people of the United States, this is a majority now demanding an end to this war and the return of the troops, have found a voice. Cindy Sheehan is representing what the peace movement in this country, peace minded people in this country, have been looking for the past two or three years. I don’t feel badly for George Bush right now.

These folks are on the defensive, and they deserve what’s coming to them. They should be held accountable, they should be asked the tough questions, and it took a mother like Cindy Sheehan to come to the scene, to draw a line, and say enough is enough. You are accountable for what you have done in Iraq; you are accountable for what you have done to our troops. You are responsible for the blood of our soldiers. You owe answers to the American public -why you went to this war. What happened to the whole issue of the weapons of mass destruction? You told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Why is that irrelevant all of a sudden? Why is the death of a hundred thousand Iraqis suddenly unavoidable road kill? These are difficult questions that nobody has asked and Ms. Cindy Sheehan has finally given voice to the voiceless people of this country who have been struggling, honestly for the past few years. And now we have a person who can articulate these questions to the President and to this administration and hold them accountable for what they have done.

Smith: President Bush contradicted his generals about any troop pull outs or increases in Iraq. He did say things were going well there, but seemed to get kind of lost in the middle of a question about Iran. What do you make of his continued optimism about Iraq?

Hadi Jawad: I think the President is delusional when it comes to Iraq. These people are living in a fog. Iraq is a failed state. Iraq has been completely destabilized by the U.S. action. The American people are way ahead of the President. 60% of the American people are saying that this war was not worth it, and the President continues to say that this was the right course for U.S. policy to take.

So it’s horrifying that this man continues to spout this propaganda about how things are going well in Iraq when Iraq is actually all in flames, it’s in complete chaos. And yet they want the American people to believe that things are progressing rather than regressing. It’s part of this thing that these folks are very good at. They spend millions of dollars developing ideas and programs, how to fool the American people by using slick language and skills that they have learned from the advertising media for example.

Smith: I understand Cindy Sheehan met with Bush National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and a deputy White House chief of staff also. Did she make any plan to see George Bush?

Hadi Jawad: Cindy Sheehan is committed to spend the entire month of August in Crawford requesting and seeking an audience with the President. She has some questions to ask the President, and as the President of this country he owes it to this mother of a slain soldier to come, to give her the dignity of meeting with her and answering the very simple questions that she wants to ask him.

Smith: This issue of troop withdrawal. General Casey was explaining that there was an anticipation that troops would be pulled out in the spring. In the days after that statement was made, others were made about troop increases. So evidently it’s not simple as far as the Pentagon and White House getting their statement together when Ms. Sheehan calls for this pullout of U.S. troops. Have you given thought to what could happen in Iraq after such a pull out?

Hadi Jawad: Well they keep telling us that there is a potential of a civil war. The problem is that the civil war is raging already and this is happening in a country which has no history of sectarian violence. The Shiites and the Sunnis have been living together peacefully in Iraq, and I say that because I have family in Iraq on both sides, Shiite and Sunni. -They have been living peacefully for the past 1400 years.

Now if you look at history a little bit, when Ghandi was confronting the British Empire in India and he demanded the withdrawal of British might from the sub continent the same reasons were given that are given now. The British would very quickly say that we would love to withdraw from India but we are afraid that India would drop into complete chaos into an abyss of despair and chaos if you would withdraw. The Iraqi people are very intelligent. This is the cradle of civilization. It’s a 6000 year old civilization for crying out loud. These people know what democracy is because democracy was birthed in Mesopotamia.

It is very arrogant for the United States to dictate and tell the Iraqi people how they should conduct their lives, how they should live, what sort of government they should have. These people know how to live. They taught us how to live. The only solution to the problem is the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq immediately. The United States Military and its allies are themselves the source of destabilization in Iraq. The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is by itself the problem. If that problem is removed Iraq has a chance of charting its own destiny, its own course into the future.

Smith: Now in the press recently we’ve seen where the office of a mayor in Iraq was actually stormed and a Shiite installed himself in that office. Have you heard this story or have you heard other stories out of Iraq about what’s happening there that you would like to mention as a way of talking about what’s going on there that troubles you so much.

Hadi Jawad: There’s no question but that there is lawlessness in Iraq. There’s chaos. And the blame for all of this has to be lain squarely at the doorstep of the U.S. Military planners. It’s the United States that has destabilized Iraq and its going to take according to Iraqis themselves, the intellectuals in Iraq, twenty to twenty five years, two or three generations, for Iraqis to be able to heal the rifts that have developed between them. And nothing, none of this healing process can begin until and unless the U.S. Military troops are withdrawn from Iraq.

Hadi Jawad is one of the founders of the Crawford Peace House in Texas. I’m Dori Smith. You’ve been listening to a special Talk Nation radio broadcast. Talk Nation radio is produced in the studios of WHUS Storrs Radio for the People, at the University of Connecticut. Wednesdays at 5 PM for Talk Nation Radio.