Hell hath no fury...

... like a Gold Star mom scorned -- Cindy Sheehan: Hypocrites and Liars:

I say my son died for LIES. George Bush LIED to us and he knew he was LYING. The Downing Street Memos dated 23 July, 2002 prove that he knew that Saddam didn't have WMDs or any ties to Al Qaeda. I believe that George lied and he knew he was lying. He didn't use patriotic rhetoric. He lied and made us afraid of ghosts that weren't there. Now he is using patriotic rhetoric to keep the U.S. military presence in Iraq: Patriotic rhetoric that is based on greed and nothing else.

Now I am being vilified and dragged through the mud by the righties and so-called 'fair and balanced' mainstream media who are afraid of the truth and can't face someone who tells it by telling any truth of their own. Now they have to twist, distort, lie, and scrutinize anything I have ever said when they never scrutinize anything that George Bush said or is saying.

Ain't it the truth.

Frank Rich has more in this Sunday's column, The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan:

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real."

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the "liberal media," we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s.

The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to Cindy Sheehan's "wacko" rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget about her dead son. But if much of the 24/7 media has taken the bait, much of the public has not.

Rich makes some good points (as usual) but I think missed one important point. Cindy Sheehan has nothing to lose. She's already lost everything that meant anything to her, her son. Bush, on the other hand, has everything to lose. While the Rove smear-machine is in full whirlitzer mode, and none of it is sticking because she is fighting back (unlike Kerry, who tried to ride out the August storm for too long) by calling them on their lies.

What's worse for the Swift Boaters is that she is not alone. Rove can't Swift Boat (which is now a verb) all of the Gold Star mom's that have joined Cindy in her vigil in Crawford, or in the satelite Camp Casey's around the country, there are simply too many of them. Besides, he's a little too preoccupied these days with troubles of his own.

Dubya could have nipped this in the bud right at the start by walking out to his gate and inviting her in to hear her out, but it is too late for that now. Why didn't he do it? Ask yourself why he had his minions screen attendees at his "Town Hall" rallys. He can't handle criticism face to face. He's a coward.