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Last week I wrote, in a previous blog entry, how a majority of the American public still favors funding the war in Iraq although it is, by a wide majority, against that same war. Based on the latest poll numbers, a Democratic Party led Congress voted last week to fund the war as long as Iraqis met certain benchmarks — please let me know if you understand what they are.

Today Cindy Sheehan, the face of the anti-war movement in the U.S. and around the world, hung up her cleats, rightfully frustrated with the hypocrisy of the whole thing. On Sunday, Ms. Sheehan had announced she had quit the Democratic Party because of their continuation of this illegal and scandalous war which claimed one of her sons, Casey.

Alvaro F. Fernandez

What follows is a report by Britain’s The Gardian about Ms. Sheehan’s actions.

Sheehan Quits as Face of US Anti-War Fight

By Dan Glaister

The Guardian UK

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq three years ago, said yesterday she was stepping down from her role as the figurehead of the US campaign against the war.

“This is my resignation letter as the ‘face’ of the American anti-war movement,” she wrote in a sometimes bitter diary entry on the website Daily Kos. “I am going to take whatever I have left, and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children, and try to regain some of what I have lost.”

Ms Sheehan, 49, rose to prominence when she voiced her discontent with President George Bush’s policies when he met her and other grieving members of military families.

Announcing her decision on Memorial Day, the anniversary on which the US remembers its war dead, she said that her announcement had been prompted by the recent hostility she had faced from Democrats.

“I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party,” she wrote. “However, when I started to hold the Democratic party to the same standards that I held the Republican party, support for my cause started to erode, and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used.”

On Saturday, in an open letter to Democratic members of Congress, she announced that she was leaving the party because she felt its leaders had failed to change the country’s course in Iraq.

She said that the most devastating conclusion she had reached after three years of protest, which included a trip to Cuba and the setting up of a protest camp outside Mr Bush’s Texas ranch, was that her son had died for nothing.

“I have tried ever since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful,” she wrote. “Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months.”

Reading about it in The New York Times, my reaction was spontaneous: there go the Democrats again, legs all aquiver resulting in a caving in to pressure.

I was wrong. Today I found out the real reason: A new poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS shows that a majority of Americans “support continuing to fund the war as long as the Iraqi government meets specific goals,” as written by Dalia Sussman of the Times. The compromise, politically speaking, then turns out well for both sides: Bush gets his war dollars and the Demos get their benchmarks.

But if a majority of Americans support war funding…

It’s interesting to compare the two sides. Democrats took the safe route. They argued and waited. When poll numbers showed up, they took action. The safe bet: go with the majority.

If it had been the republicans in charge, well, not all republicans, let’s call them Bush republicans, they would have concocted some kind of crazy story based on lies, half truths and who knows what else, and tried selling the American public on it. A massive publicity campaign would have been waged until poll numbers gave them the public reaction they needed. And then they would have acted.

In the end, I think they’re both wrong.

Where’s the democratic “leadership”? I never had much faith in Senate President Harry Reid. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sure let me down, though.

Alvaro F. Fernandez

Attributed to Noriega was the following comment: “… further contacts between the U.S. and Cuban military have long been resisted by the U.S. government in part because of fears that Cuban intelligence officers would take advantage of U.S. military officers…”

There is more than one conclusion that I have reached. A comment like the one made by Noriega implies that U.S. military officers are not very smart. At least not as smart as their Cuban counterparts. Or is it that the Cuban intelligence officers are just sexier than the U.S.’ and Noriega is afraid that they might fall under the spell of a Cuban mystique?

Whatever the reason, the Noriega comment made no sense to me.

Then again, when has almost anything the U.S. does when it comes to Cuba made any sense?

Alvaro F. Fernandez

In other parts of this great town of ours, Orlando Bosch also walks free, another alleged conspirator in the blowing up of the Cubana Airliner. This one set free by the first George Bush, W’s father.

But the war on terror continues, for everyone, that is, except those fighting Fidel. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a plan to put all these Cuban terrorists (and there are others not mentioned) to suffer in Miami. And many do suffer, knowing that Fidel has outlasted most of them, and a year after a celebration outside of that same Versailles because of his “death”, the Cuban leader seems well on his way to recuperating…

These are excerpts from a May 14 Toledo Blade editorial:

“In the case of Luis Posada Carriles, the United States is once again transmitting to the world a hypocritical message: When it comes to terrorism, do as we say, not as we do…

… Why is such inexplicable deference being shown by the Bush Administration to a man our own Justice Department has branded “a dangerous criminal and an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots”? …

… The Los Angeles Times reports that declassified CIA communications shows Posada to have been part of the “operation” in which a Cubana airliner was blown up over Barbados 31 years ago. …

… Whoever is orchestrating Posada’s escape to freedom apparently is of a Cold War mind that extremism in defense of virtue is no vice, especially when Castro is the enemy.

But that view contrasts sharply with the U.S.’s hard line against terrorism elsewhere and can only expose this nation to a charge of hypocrisy that further erodes American credibility on the world stage.”

And Dewayne Wickham writes in a column for the Zanesville Times Recorder, also on May 14:

“…The most troubling charge against Posada is that he was part of a terrorist clique responsible for bombing a Havana-bound commercial airliner in 1976. The explosion killed 76 people - mostly Cuban citizens.

Posada was involved “up to his eyeballs” in that bloody act of terrorism, Carter Cornick, an FBI counterterrorism specialist who investigated the bombing, told The New York Times in 2005. That charge is supported by a declassified State Department report that quotes Posada as telling someone shortly before the plane was downed: “We are going to hit a Cuban airliner.” …

… So why has Posada been ordered into home detention instead of being hustled off to one of the cage-like cells at Guantanamo Bay?

It seems that some acts of terrorism, real or perceived, are acceptable to the Bush administration — if the target is Fidel Castro’s government. No one in the White House is going to say so publicly, but it’s hard to draw any other conclusion from the way Posada is being treated.

For all of the Bush administration’s righteous indignation about terrorism, it coddles Posada.” …

And a Sun Sentinel editorial was simply titled Terrorism. Here are excerpts:

… “The Posada case puts U.S. international credibility in question. The critical, underlying issue at hand is really not how Posada got into the United States. What is most important to all Americans is getting to the bottom of his past and determining whether he committed terrorist acts.

U.S. government agencies have been releasing documents on Posada’s past. A smoking gun tying him to the airline bombing hasn’t emerged, but there sure is a lot of smoke.

It’s past time to get to the bottom of this. U.S. law enforcement agencies and prosecutors must make the Posada inquiry a priority, and if evidence warrants it, bring charges against him. The United States must set an example in worldwide efforts to root out terrorists.

One thing’s for sure. Posada should not be treated as a hero in Miami, or anywhere else. Violence won’t bring freedom to Castro’s Cuba any more than it brought liberty after Fulgencio Batista’s rule.”

Alvaro F. Fernandez