After two years spent trying to confront President Bush and traveling around the world in protest of the Iraq war, “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan said Tuesday she’s giving up. The soldier’s mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with a highly publicized protest outside Bush’s Texas ranch, said she’s returning to her native California, where she’s “going to try and be normal.” Since Sheehan became a lightning rod in the Iraq war debate in August 2005, she has inspired both praise and vitriol.
[ NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE CONTRIBUTED. ]“Cindy Sheehan has become the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement.”
— Rev. Lennox Yearwood, leader of the Hip Hop Caucus
“Cindy has chosen to use her dead son’s image to promote political causes. That’s just inappropriate.”
— Cherie Quartarolo, Sheehan’s former sister-in-law
“Sheehan is highlighting the lack of a reason to go to war, the lack of preparedness to go to war and the lack of proper treatment for our returning veterans.”
— Christine Cegelis, former Democratic congressional candidate in Illinois
“I can rightly describe her as a far-left radical.”
— Fox News host Bill O’Reilly
“It felt like the early days of civil rights when things would go on instinct and you planned the next march on five minutes’ notice. … Michael Moore put a fissure in the wall of denial, and Cindy Sheehan put her foot through it.”
— Singer Joan Baez, who spent a week at Sheehan’s “Camp Casey”
“Like the hard left in the Vietnam War, she declares the Iraq mission itself corrupt and evil: The good guys are the ‘freedom fighters’ — the very ones who besides killing thousands of Iraqi innocents, killed her son too.”
— Charles Krauthammer, columnist
