Cindy Sheehan arrived in Cuba yesterday for a protest at the gates of Gitmo!
"Anyone who knows me knows that I am not afraid of anything," Sheehan said when asked about the possibility of U.S. sanctions for traveling to communist-run Cuba, which remains under an American trade embargo.
Do the Dems need Sheehan to show them what fearlessness looks like or is her fearlessness or do they fear her political recklessness? What is appropriate behaviour where every day's delay mean more lives destroyed and lost?
More details after the jump.
Code Pink, organizers of the trip have announced that January 11th is the international day to shut down Guantanamo.
Sheehan will be joined by Zohra Zewawi, Asif Iqbal, and retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, according to a story in the International Herald Tribune. Asif Iqbal is a former detainee who was released without being charged. Zewawi's son has been held at Guantanamo without charges since the beginning of the war.
"I am traveling all the way from Dubai because my heart is overflowing with grief over the abuse and ongoing detention of my son," Zewawi said in a statement distributed by Benjamin's Global Exchange group of California, a lead organizer of the trip with the U.S. group CODEPINK: Women for Peace.
Zewawi said her son, British citizen Omar Deghayes, had been tortured and blinded in one eye since he was imprisoned in September 2002 and still had not been charged or tried.
http://www.iht.com/...
Approximately 395 prisoners are still in custody at Guantanamo. The U.S. gov't has announced plans to bring about 60 to 80 of them to trial. In order to do this, our administration plans to build a 125 million dollar courtroom (do the math).
The Los Angeles Times said the new compound would have three courtrooms, restaurants, parking and accommodations for at least 800 people. Stimson (deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs) defended the price tag.
"We're fiscal conservatives by definition. We're not building the Taj Mahal here," he told the Times.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/...
The new democratic majority in Congress can look forward to receiving the funding request for the courtroom complex as part of the Defense Department's supplemental funding request in February or March.
According to CNN, Sheehan landed in Cuba yesterday (Saturday) evening with trip organizer Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK.
Sheehan and 11 other activists will travel across the island to protest at the gates of the Guantanamo base next Thursday, the five year anniversary of the first prisoners being flown in.
Weigh in on this important topic in the comments.
Nuggets from the Freepers Thread on Sheehan's Trip to Cuba
Please, let her go. I hope she is on the front page of every media outlet in the country.
Let's make sure EVERYONE really understands what the democrats stand for. The only way the democrats can get elected is to pretend to be much closer to the center than they really are.
We've been suggesting that for years, to no avail.
What was her son's name again? I can't remember. What a destruction of the legacy of a truly honorable American.