Spinning the Cindy Sheehan Arrest

By now you probably heard that Cindy Sheehan was arrested Monday while protesting outside the White House. What you might not have heard is that about three hundred and seventy other protesters were also arrested.

Over 500 demonstrators had gathered on the sidewalk near the main entrance to the presidential mansion. Each carried a board bearing the name of an American soldier killed in Iraq. About 300 moved away after police warned that arrests would follow. Police later said they had arrested 370 of the protesters.

As Sheehan and the others were slowly led away to waiting buses and police trucks, activists behind police lines shouted: "The whole world is watching". Five women went topless carrying boards proclaiming: "War is indecent".

Some of the Cindy-focussed reporting is worth a closer look.

The AP / MSNBCcalls her "the California woman who has used her son’s death in Iraq to spur the anti-war movement". While that may be factually correct, it's an interesting slant in the first para. And the last para could have been scripted by Karl Rove himself:

“I would like to say to Cindy Sheehan and her supporters, ‘Don’t be a group of unthinking lemmings.’ It’s not pretty,” said Mitzy Kenny of Ridgeley, W.Va., whose husband died in Iraq last year. The anti-war demonstrations “can affect the war in a really negative way. It gives the enemy hope.”

Baa-a-a-a!!! Terrorists are Fascists! Democrats are Nazis! We accuse you of whatever you accuse us of!

Reuters says Sheehan was "purposely courting arrest". That is basically a lie. Sheehan's declared intention for weeks has been to camp outside the White House just as she did in Crawford. If the local police wont let her camp on the footpath, that's not her fault.

All I can say is, expect more arrests. Maybe thousands of them, if that's what it's going to take. It's time the scum in the White House were forced to listen to "we, the people".