In the wake of her retirement from the antiwar movement earlier this week, Cindy Sheehan appeared on the talkradio show of Alex Jones yesterday and had some 9/11 conspiracy comments that may marginalize her from the Daily Kos community and in any case, are certainly worth reporting and discussing. But the rest of the interview is relevant too.
If you'd like to hear the whole interview, you can listen here:
http://prisonplanet.com/...
If not, follow me below the fold for a summary of her and Alex's main points.
- Alex asks Cindy to sum up "the whole saga" of the last few years leading to her announcement of a few days ago.
Cindy responded by noting that she was a history major but that even in universities we get cherry-picked stories of how great our country is (hmm, she must never have taken a class with me!) But as a result of her own research, she has evolved to "anti-fascism, anti-corporatism . . ." and not just anti-war.
She complained about having been co-opted by the Democrats and betrayed by them in their vote for the funding measure.
- Alex says that the left-right paradigm is false and says that Democrats and Republicans are joined at the hip.
Cindy says that we are a laughingstock all over the world due to the inability of Americans to motivate Congress. She calls for those who sit behind their computers to "start making some sacrifices." A hit at bloggers in general. She also says that she plans to fight for those who are victims of US imperialism abroad (nothing controversial there, really).
Cindy calls Hilary a warhawk and warmonger and says that there is no difference between Rudy and Hilary, and Alex JOnes agrees.
- Alex asks about Israel and 9/11
Cindy calls the 9/11 commission investigation a "travesty" and a "smokescreen" and calls for "the first" independent investigation. She says that our support for Israel's policies has caused a lot of our problems in the Muslim world and that our policies need to be fair in that region. But she also notes that many Israeli Jews find their government to be oppressive of the Palestinians. She doesn't make any other attempted connection between Jews and 9/11, thank goodness, or I'd have to get REALLY annoyed.
She says that she doesn't know that the government "did" 9/11, but that there are some things that don't add up. She talked about air defense weaknesses, and proposes that there was a "controlled demolition" of the WTC 7 building from a "very amateur eye."
- Jones notes that in general the American people are disgusted with the Democratic party and support her.
Cindy responds that there is room for everyone in the peace movement and that she and her fellow workers will come back from a different angle in the future.
My reaction: I don't think Cindy Sheehan did herself or the peace movement any favors by espousing crazy conspiracy theories and that she should have confined her comments to her area of expertise. This doesn't detract from her actions to this point, but it would make me very loath to follow any initiative of hers in the future. I like my leaders to be reality-based.