From the

AFP

Bush spotlights mom of troops who backs
Iraq war

US President George W. Bush contrasted a military mother whose five sons
and husband have served in Iraq with anti-war protestors he said risked
emboldening terrorists.

“There are few things in life more difficult than seeing a loved one go off
to war. Here, in Idaho, a mom named Tammy Pruett … knows that feeling six
times over,” the president said in a speech to citizen soldiers here.

His salute to Pruett was a clear response to anti-war protestor Cindy
Sheehan, who has besieged the president at his Texas ranch and demanded a
meeting with him to discuss the death of her soldier son in Iraq.

Bush, who was to meet with relatives of troops serving in Iraq and
Afghanistan after his speech, has increasingly criticized Sheehan as
unrepresentative of most military families he meets.

Bush said Pruett has four sons serving in the Idaho National Guard in Iraq,
and that her husband and another son came home from Iraq in 2004 after helping
to train firefighters in the city of Mosul.

The president quoted her as saying “‘I know that if something happens to
one of the boys, they would leave this world doing what they believe, what
they believe is right for our country. And I guess you couldn’t ask for a
better way of life than giving it for something you believe in.'”

“America lives in freedom because of families like the Pruetts,” said Bush,
who faced slumping approval ratings and polls showing that a majority of the
US public thinks the war in Iraq was a mistake.

Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy said in reaction to Bush’s speech, that
more than “photo-ops and spin” are needed to win the Iraq war.

“(Bush) needs to realize what most Americans now understand that staying
the course is not an option.”

Bush, who was to return to his ranch later in the day, also repeated his
attack on anti-war protestors as dangerous isolationists, and said they
advocated policies that would embolden terrorists.

“An immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq or the broader Middle East,
as some have called for, would only embolden the terrorists and create a
staging ground to launch more attacks against America and free nations,” he
told an audience mostly made up of Idaho National Guard members.

“So long as I’m the president, we will stay, we will fight, and we will win
the war on terror,” said Bush, who announced that global campaign after the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

It was not clear how many protestors, if any, want the United States to
retreat from the Middle East entirely.

Bush also urged Americans to be patient as Iraqis vie to draft a new
constitution.

“The establishment of a democratic constitution will be a landmark event in
the history of Iraq and the history of the history of the Middle East. It will
bring us closer to a day when Iraq is a nation that can govern itself, sustain
itself, and defend itself,” Bush said.

Bush’s speech came shortly after Sheehan said she was resuming her vigil
outside the president’s ranch near tiny Crawford, Texas. She has met once
before with Bush shortly after her son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004.

“I’m coming back to Crawford for my son. As long as the president, who sent
him to die in a senseless war, is in Crawford, that is where I belong,”
Sheehan wrote in an essay published on the website The Huffington Post.

On Thursday, Sheehan announced that she was leaving “Camp Casey,” the
protest site she named for her son, and returning to California because her
mother had suffered a stroke.

She has said she plans to stay outside the president’s vacation home until
he either meets with her or returns to Washington.

More than 1,800 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq and thousands more
wounded in a conflict with a price tag in the tens of billions of dollars.

As fresh violence raged across Iraq Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld ordered 1,500 more US troops to the country to beef up security for
the planned elections.

If your loved one dies in Iraq and you support the lies of George Bush then
you are a patriot. If your loved one dies in Iraq and you don’t support him,
well then you are a terrorist. This President has totally lost his touch with
the people of this nation and it is time for him to leave office.