First, I want to give my little story about Lynne. Of course, you all have read To Kill a Mockingbird. Lynne is my human Atticus Finch. He did what he knew was right, but wasn’t popular. And that’s what Lynne is doing. {applause}
We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush. {applause}
How many more people are we going to let him kill before we stop him? I’m going to talk about free speech and recruitment. Do you know that it costs $66,000 to recruit one recruit? That’s continuing all of their – you know, the recruiter’s salary, the recruiter’s bonus, the place that they rent to recruit and things like that. All the perks they get and everything. That’s not even training the recruit. It costs our government about $6,000 a year on each child in California. $46,000 a year to house a prisoner in our state. Our priorities are seriously screwed up, as I mentioned.
I really want to thank you guys for doing this, especially the young people. It gives me so much hope to know that there’s young people who care more about who’s our next American Idol – less about that. You guys care more about people being killed. There’s too many that care more about the next American Idol. Too many people in our country that don’t even really know we have a war going on. You know, they never have to think of the war, and I’ll never, ever forget this war. I can never forget it, even when I’m sleeping {tears} I know that we’re in a war and I know that George Bush and his band of neo-cons and their neo-con agenda killed my son. And I’ll never, ever, ever forget.
I take responsibility partly for my son’s death, too. I was raised in a country by a public school system that taught us that America was good, that America was just. America has been killing people, like my sister over here says, since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted. I’m going all over the country telling moms: “This country is not worth dying for. If we’re attacked, we would all go out. We’d all take whatever we had. I’d take my rolling pin and I’d beat the attackers over the head with it. But we were not attacked by Iraq. {applause} We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if {applause}. 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through and, if I would have known that before my son was killed, I would have taken him to Canada. I would never have let him go and try and defend this morally repugnant system we have. The people are good, the system is morally repugnant. {applause}
Please – teach your babies, teach your babies better than I taught my babies. When Congress gave George Bush the right to go to war, they abrogated their constitutional responsibilities and they basically made our constitution null and void. We have no checks and balances in this country. We have no recourse. If they’re going to what they did to Lynne, they don’t have backs they call names, what we need to be is, we the people, we’re their checks and balances. We’re the only checks and balances. We have to stand up and say, Not only is this our school, this is our country. We want our country back and, if we have to impeach everybody from George Bush down to the person who picks up dog shit in Washington, we will impeach all those people. Our country needs to {unintelligible} we need to start over again.
I just want to say that you students, Students Against War, you have all my support and all my organization’s support. I told Kristen if you have any actions and you need a ringleader, that I only live about an hour away. I’ll be here. If I can sleep on somebody’s floor, we can have this, we can camp out, do whatever we need.
And I just want to way to George Bush and I want to say to the people who are here, that are still sheep {unintelligible} and following him blindly: if George Bush believes his rhetoric and his bullshit, that this is a war for freedom and democracy, that he is spreading freedom and democracy, does he think every person he kills makes Iraq more free? It doesn’t make us more free. It damages our humanity. The whole world is damaged. Our humanity is damaged. If he thinks that it’s so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go this war. They need to fight because a just war, the definition of a just war, and maybe you people here who still think this is a just war, the definition of a just war is one that you would send your own children to die in. That you would go die in yourself. And you aren’t willing to send your own children, or if you’re not willing to go die yourself, then you bring there rest of our kids home now. It is despicable what they’re doing. {applause}
What they’re saying, too, is like, it’s okay for Israel to have nuclear weapons. But Iran or Syria better not get nuclear weapons. It’s okay for the United States to have nuclear weapons. It’s okay for the countries that we say it’s okay for. We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now. It’s okay for them to have them, but Iran or Syria can’t have them. It’s okay for Israel to occupy Palestine, but it’s – yeah – and it’s okay for Iraq to occupy – I mean, for the United States to occupy Iraq, but it’s not okay for Syria to be in Lebanon. They’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites! And we need to, we just need to rise up. We need a revolution and make it be peaceful and make it be loving and let’s just show them all the love we have for humanity because we want to stop the inhumane slaughter.
{wild applause}
Emphasis is all my own.
Nice. She’s definitely not trying to capitalize on the tragic death of her son or anything like that. As heartless as it may seem, I really have absolutely no sympathy for Sheehan after reading that. I just do not buy into all of that “support the troops, protest the war” nonsense. This woman is a walking propaganda tool for the Left and If someone calls her the anti-war “everywoman” again I am going to vomit. Didn’t her son make his own choice to serve into the military? Did she force him into it? I have sympathy for her son’s other family members (father, sister, etc) but after reading that prime example of conspiracy theory luancy above, I have lost any that I had left for her. Sorry.
