“We’re watching you [Bush] very carefully and we’re going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people. Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life.” Cough, cough – Loser! – cough. Excuse me.

Cindy Sheehan is a woman who has used her son’s death to exploit and spur an anti-war movement, has criticized Israel, has held Bush responsible for the hurricane (not the response, but the actual swirling winds), has accused Americans of killing people ever since we stepped onto this continent, has deemed Iraqi insurgents “freedom fighters,” has threatened Hillary Clinton with the loss of her job unless she commands a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and has called the U.S. accomplishments in Afghanistan “a failure.” Nice credentials.

On top of her impressive resume, she heavily sponsors a removal of troops from Iraq expedition rallying across the United States called the “Bring Them Home Now Tour,” which reached its pinnacle in front of the White House with an arrest of the saint herself.

Their mission statement: that elected representatives decide to bring troops back immediately, that people take care of them when they arrive and that the country never again sends soldiers “to war based on lies.”

I find it quite humorous that Ms. Sheehan speaks so passionately of an administration’s lies and hardly ever expands beyond that single word.

What “lies” are you referring to, Cindy? Your perpetual rhetoric about Bush misleading the country to war is complete and utter nonsense – all you’d have to do is glance over the Sept. 11 Commission Report to realize that.

People tend to view things which have already happened as being relatively inevitable and conventional. Psychologists refer to this as “hindsight bias.” For example, when you receive a test back with the correct answers, oftentimes you’ll immediately kick yourself, because “you knew it all along.”

This phenomenon must be entirely eliminated when deciding upon whether or not the invasion of Iraq was justified. The decision to go to war can only be looked at prior, and up to, the actual day of invasion, because once it’s weighed past day one, justifications of the choice become skewed by results.

With that said, Bush never once lied, misled or “swaggered” the United States into war, as claimed by Phil Donahue. And anyone who attempts to refute this idiotic idea needs to refer to Bush’s address to the American people on March 17, 2003 that laid out the who, what, when, where and, most importantly, “why” the invasion of Iraq was necessary.

The administration’s justification was two-fold. First was the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence was gathered by numerous government agencies, over a dozen, in fact – including Lord Butler’s Report, Vladamir Putin’s Russian Intelligence and Israeli Secret Service, and it all pointed in one direction: Iraq’s possession of WMDs, a slam dunk.

Along with the United Nations, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Al Gore themselves all deemed Hussein an international threat. As a vulnerable nation after the Sept. 11 attacks, something of this magnitude could not be ignored by the president.

Secondly, as part of the peace agreement that was signed to end the First Gulf War, Saddam agreed to give up all of his weapons of mass destruction and allow U.N. weapons inspectors to verify his compliance.

He then continued to violate eighteen U.N. mandates to disarm, and, in 1998, refused to allow the weapons inspectors any further admission inside Iraq. More than four years later, U.N .Resolution 1441 was passed, demanding that Saddam produce his WMDs immediately or face “serious consequences.” Saddam refused to comply with 1441.

Some of Cindy’s most depressing quotes: “I’m going all over the country telling moms: ‘This country is not worth dying for.'” “George Bush and his neo-conservatives killed my son.” “My son died for oil.” George Bush’s “agenda and their war machine will chew up and spit out as many of our children as they can unless we stop them now.”

The Democratic Party needs to stay as far away from Ms. Sheehan as possible.

It’s the figures like George Soros, Al Franken and Michael Moore that give the donkey a bad name.

I need not remind people that the U.S. Armed Forces is a volunteer military and that supporting the GWOT does not make you a cowardly advocate of sending kids to die.

But what appalls me most about Ms. Sheehan is that she knows the facts and continues to make disheartening claims that should infuriate mothers of fallen soldiers nationwide.

I would be willing to bet that if her son, Casey, could hear what his mom is saying to America, he’d undoubtedly be disappointed.

How dare she denigrate his, or anyone’s, service to this country.

Brian Wellman is a first-year marketing and journalism major. He may be contacted at [email protected]