In August, Cindy Sheehan kept an almost month-long vigil outside the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, protesting the war in Iraq. Is Sheehan the charismatic leader the anti-war movement has been searching for, or will her message be diluted by a cacophony of additional voices?

Cindy Sheehan and President Bush have at least one thing in common: They're both busy people with hectic schedules who had the month of August off. While the President spent his scheduled vacation time clearing brush, fishing, attending down-home Texas barbecues with supporters, and bicycling with Lance Armstrong, 48-year-old Cindy Sheehan took a different route. Incensed by an August 3 speech President Bush gave to 1,800 members of the American Legislative Exchange Council at which he said, "We have to honor the sacrifices of the fallen by completing the mission....The families of the fallen can be assured that they died for a noble cause," Sheehan had a brainstorm, she told the crowd of 250 during her keynote speech at the Veterans for Peace (VFP) convention in Dallas on August 4: That she would go to President Bush's vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas, pitch a tent outside, and wait "until that jerk comes out and tells me why my son died."

Sheehan's 24-year-old son Casey was killed in a battle with Shiite militia members on April 4, 2004, in the poverty-stricken slum of Baghdad's Sadr City. Assigned to the First Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, First Cavalry Division, of Fort Hood, Texas, his unit was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. Casey was an army specialist and volunteered to be part of a quick-response team when rioting broke out in Baghdad. An AP report following his memorial service quoted his sister Carly: "All he wanted to do was serve God and his country his whole life. He was a Boy Scout from age six or seven and an Eagle Scout. It was kind of a natural progression to go into the military from that. He said he was enjoying the military because it was just like the Boy Scouts, but they got guns."

During Sheehan's vigil, she was joined each day by new arrivals of anti-war folk, drawn to her side as pilgrims are to Mecca. A beacon of light in the pathetic showing of the American peace movement and its dismal failure to gain traction since the toppling of Saddam's statue, Sheehan's voice broke through a media that has been stunningly silent on US anti-war sentiment. Her voice carries a sincere and all-too-real message: Bring our troops home, President Bush, before any more come home in a box like my son Casey. Not satisfied by sending her plea through a salivating media suffering its way through the historically slow news month of August, Sheehan simply asked to meet with the president during his month-long vacation and deliver this message in person.

There is a might in a mother's grief unseen in any other situation. For some, the grief goes inward and plays itself out in a landscape of silent screams. For others, it creates a drive that will not be stopped until the grief has been sated or abated. In Sheehan's case, her grief seems to be giving voice to an unrepresented majority of Americans—those who have difficult and heavy-hearted questions about the war in Iraq and yet are marginalized by the vociferous, us-against-them banterings of those on the extreme left and right.

Sheehan's words at the VFP convention were a clear and harsh call-out to President Bush. "We have this lying bastard, George Bush, taking a five-week vacation in a time of war. You know what? I'm never going to get to enjoy another vacation, because of him....I said to my son not to go. I said, 'You know it's wrong, you know you're going over there. You know your unit might have to kill innocent people, you know you might die.' And he said, 'My buddies are going, I have to go. If I don't go someone's going to have to do my job, and my buddies will be in danger.' So what really gets me is these chickenhawks, who sent our kids to die, without ever serving in a war themselves. They don't know what it's all about."

Sheehan is one of seven founding families of Gold Star Families for Peace, an organization that came together at the beginning of 2005. Available to speak at events at a moments notice, they serve as a support group for those who have lost friends or family members "as a result of war," under a stated mission "to be a positive force in our world to bring our country's sons and daughters home from Iraq, to minimize the 'human cost' of this war, and to prevent other families from the pain we are feeling as the result of our losses." Their website membership list includes only 70 families who lost loved ones not only in Iraq, but Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, and World War II. As of August 19, 1,861 US soldiers had died as a result of Operation Iraqi freedom. But it is Sheehan, speaking out with her simple, focused message, who has reached a media pinnacle from her roadside vigil in Texas. She has become the main voice of the Gold Star Families for Peace and gotten the media's attention that has in turn woken up sleepy anti-war voices who are now jumping on her bandwagon.

According to reports posted in an ongoing blog hosted by Truthout.com covering the Crawford vigil, after announcing her plan to go to Crawford at the VFP convention, Sheehan asked the crowd, "Who can drive me?" Hands went up across the room, word went out on the Internet, and by 8:30 the next morning, 15 cars and a bus were gassed up with 40 to 50 activists ready to go. Arriving at Crawford, the group set up what soon came to be named "Camp Casey" in honor of Sheehan's slain son. Within a few days numbers onsite grew to approximately 80 people, with another 80 staying in nearby hotels and homes, and 50 or 60 more stopping by. Donations and supplies began to pour in, and before long folks were coming from as far away as New Jersey, Montana, Georgia, California, Alabama, New York, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Pennsylvania.

The national and international media swarmed in, and Sheehan began to give interviews round-the-clock. People promised to put Sheehan on its cover. Chronogram's scheduled interview with Sheehan on August 19 got bumped due to Sheehan's need to be rested for the passing of Bush's motorcade on its way to a local Republican fundraiser (the first Bush drive-by since Sheehan's arrival in Crawford). Calls to Jodie Evans of Code Pink (an anti-war offshoot of the human rights group Global Exchange ) to reschedule went unanswered. Around that same time it was reported that True Majority hired Fenton Communications to handle Sheehan's PR.

By that time, anti-war hordes were making their way to Crawford, most looking to support Sheehan and others...well, as has been the case of many of the major peace rallies since 9/11, every Tom, Dick, and Annie with an agenda to sell turned up. Nervously treading into the dangerously murky waters of what some feel is very wrong with the left's anti-war movement, Truthout.com editor William Rivers Pitt wrote on August 11:

I may sound like a bit of a heretic saying this, but I have a rogue nerve tingling a concern right now. Until today, the group here was relatively small, everyone knew each other and everyone was entirely on the same page. Now there appears to be a bunch of new folks here, and they all mean well, but a number of them appear inspired to be interested in dragging the whole thing toward whatever inspires them. There is a Pamphleteer Guy with his anti-theocracy newspaper buttonholing everyone he can find to buy his paper. There are the young radicals who are arguing with themselves about what actions they can take, whether or not those actions have anything to do with Cindy. There is nothing wrong right now. I just hope the people who have just come, and the people on the way, remember to be down for the main cause that started this. It would be a real tragedy if this turned into an ANSWER rally, with everyone rocking their own rallying cry. Right now this is laser-focused. It needs to stay that way.

ANSWER (Act Now To Stop War And End Racism), is a socialist group that, according to their website, formed in the days after 9/11 and is "a coalition of hundreds of organizations and prominent individuals and scores of organizing centers in cities and towns across the country." When Middle America began to come out in strong numbers at peace rallies held in places like New York City or Washington, DC, where ANSWER had a sponsoring presence, anti-war protesters were subjected to rant after rant on every social issue from Vieques to Venezuela to Palestine to the plight of grocery workers in California that diluted the singular "No War in Iraq" message. I have often wondered if this is why the American peace movement has become so silent—too many messages drowning out the main point.

This issue rasied its head on August 15, when Chronogram received a press release from Judith Karpova, a local "author, nonviolent activist and one of the International Human Shields who traveled to Iraq just before 'Shock and Awe.'" Announcing that she was "getting on a plane to Crawford to join other Human Shields" in support of Sheehan, Karpova's press release highlighted and talked more about the activities, actions, and plights of herself and a few fellow Shields since returning from Iraq, than it did about Sheehan.

While many (and certainly Karpova), who flew down to Crawford to be by Sheehan's side are genuine, steadfast, or as Pitt says, "well meaning" in their message, the simple truth is that there are also those among them who are media hounds, agendists, and dysfunctionaries, who will ultimately water-down and delegitimize Sheehan's (and by proxy, any) succinct and rational anti-war message for the country to rally around. And even more damaging, they open up the message to distortion, by what media and political columnist Norman Solomon calls "the pro-war propaganda arsenal" of the US. In an August 17 TomPaine.com editorial, Solomon wrote, "Pro-Bush media hit squads are busily spreading the notions that Sheehan is a dupe of radicals, naïve and/or nutty."

When told some Republicans commented that Sheehan was being used, and her message was being co-opted by anti-Bush liberal groups, Sheehan admitted to USA Today that some of her supporters were diverting attention from her central message. "I appreciate all their help, but their help is going to have to diminish and go to the sidelines," Sheehan said. "It's going to have to get back to a mom sitting in a chair waiting for George Bush." Of those who suggest that her personal tragedy has become a political rallying point, she said, "I kind of see their point that this was a grassroots thing that grew into a monster."

I relate to Pitt's "rogue nerve tingling a concern" and can say for a fact that there is more than a grain of truth in the presence of "naive and/or nutty radicals" in the anti-war movement. Among them are both old-time 60's anti-war activists and others joined up in lieu of the war on Iraq. A mixed bag of these arrived in Baghdad shortly before midnight on February 15, 2003, International Peace Day, as two double-decker busloads of western Human Shields arrived at the Andalus Apartments hotel where I was staying. These people were willing to use their bodies as shields, placing themselves in infrastructure buildings and hospitals as a human repellent to bombs. They also brought with them their own unique war. Many were contentious—bickering and openly fighting amongst themselves while taking in the free residency and meals supplied by the Saddam regime that welcomed their support. Their passions were both subdued and incited by their partying.

Playing roles as peace ambassadors, the question arose, just what were these westerners bringing with them? And what sort of messages, and/or reports, were being sent—both to Iraqis and to the world—through the specific baggage they brought along? When faced with stories from Iraqis themselves as to the horrors of the Saddam regime, some ignored these tales that didn't match their agendas, while others broke rank and fled the country.

The Iraq war-related media has the same smattering of circus among its minions as well. In her July 2004 article, "The Baghdad Follies: Hunkered Down With the Press Corps in Iraq, Where the Hotels Are Always Getting Bombed But At Least You Can Score Some Excellent Hash," Rolling Stone foreign correspondent Janet Reitman portrays a media imprisoned in their heavily fortified hotels venturing out in courageous yet brief forays at tremendous risk to their lives. After the flashy headline, Reitman only briefly mentions the hashish usage: "You can buy excellent hash in Iraq. It's one of the perks of reconstruction. Before the war, getting high was punishable by a long stint in one of Saddam Hussein's jails. Now you can send an email order and have hash delivered right to your hotel room."

Hashish, among other things, were firmly embedded in the western anti-war and media cultures that had taken up residence in Baghdad. Last summer, moments after being introduced by colleagues to a western freelancer (who a short time later was kidnapped, beaten, and fled Iraq after being released), he asked if anyone had hash with them. As I watched them all light up, including an obviously novice Iraqi smoker, I had that "rogue nerve tingling a concern" that Pitt has so eloquently coined. It was the same feeling when visiting the Baghdad apartment of western "peace workers" where beer bottles, ashes, and debris of all sorts littered the scene. They were working with children terrorized by the bombings, some of who were living on the streets with addiction problems.

In what seemed to be an exorcising of demons acquired via his experience working closely with these western foreigners an agitated Iraqi, stranded in Jordan via death threats as a result of working with them "for little or no pay," ranted: "These peace people come looking for a good time and adventure. The women are all single because they can't find husbands in their own countries and they are looking for an Iraqi man. Many come here and bring drugs with them that they teach our young people to use. We never had these drugs here before. They party, they live in filth, and they are not fit for their own societies so they come here to escape."

All the elements of Sheehan's "monster" were there in Crawford to "support" her: some Human Shields, members of the peace-movement party-time circus I had met in Iraq, members of the fawning left-wing media. I would venture that these folks, along with their mirror-image cadre of "naïve and/or nutty" right-wing radicals, are a very small minority—but their antics water down and leave open for flaying the very real, very important, very necessary message that Sheehan and others are trying to air.

Messages such as those of Gold Star member Bill Mitchell, whose son Sgt. Mike Mitchell of the First Armored Division was killed in Iraq the same day as Casey Sheehan. In an interview with the Lone Star Iconoclast, Mitchell brought home the reality of his loss. "I'm sure Cindy has said it, but we know what it feels like to lose a child—to have a child killed in this war. And we are doing whatever we can to end it so quickly that no one else has to experience that same pain and devastation, the same upset in their lives....It doesn't so much matter whether I am out here speaking in the name of peace and my son's name or whether I'm out camping and having a good time, when I come home to my little four walls, my son is still dead. The death of any child is a devastating event for a parent. A piece of your heart dies when your child dies. So I just want to stop this. I don't want to hear about anybody else dying, American or Iraqi."

The antics of the circus also drown out the much more important and true life "make peace not war" stories that can occur when someone like Sheehan takes a firm public stand. "We also met a man whose son was KIA [killed in action] in Iraq in November of 2004," read one Sheehan quote. "He still loves George Bush and thinks we are doing great things in Iraq. By the end of the day we were drinking beer together and telling each other '[ I ] love you.' I am telling you miracles are happening here in Crawford."

Yes, miracles. The father who has lost a son, who loves George Bush, sits down and loves it up with Sheehan who is demanding immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq—despite the fact he thinks great things are going on in Iraq. Reporting of this sort of "miracle" wards off what columnist Solomon called, "The most promising avenue of attack," which he said, "is likely to be the one sketched out by Fox News Channel eminence Bill O'Reilly on August 9, 2005, when he declared that Cindy Sheehan bears some responsibility for 'other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.'"

Two opposing sides sitting down together in a real-life peace process also neutralizes the wasteful left-vs.-right war rhetoric taking up media space. At this time, given the stakes, the loss of life, and the complexities of the situation on the ground in Iraq, this should not be a battle between the reducing labels of "pro-" and "anti-" war, no matter how lucrative this is for both the media and for fundraisers of both "sides." More importantly, the question "Where do we go from here?" needs desperate attention and can only be answered by a coming together of minds, least we fall into an escalation of a growing violence. For now, it is only present in loud-mouthed name calling, small acts of vandalism, and worse...I have heard expressed gleeful desires for things to get worse, to fail, for body count numbers to grow—so it can be said, "I told you so." This is supposed to be about peace after all...isn't it?

"We're over there and we need to come home," Sheehan said in a conference call with reporters on August 16. "What happens in Iraq after we leave isn't a worry of ours. We need to let the Iraqi people handle their own business."

There is no doubt that Sheehan's message is brave and is in desperate need of being heard. There is no doubt that she has stirred the silence. There is no doubt that she is a warrior ready, able, and willing to do battle with the foes she says lied to the American people and the world.

But her talk of immediate withdrawal does not include (nor am I suggesting it should), the very fact that there are good things happening in Iraq; that there are some very well-meaning good soldiers attempting to do their very best job to help the situation under the most egregious of conditions; that many Americans feel a strong sense of responsibility toward Iraq and her people. Many wonder "How can we pull out tomorrow without 'fixing' some of this horrific damage we have done?" I have traveled the US speaking at colleges, universities, and high schools, before different organizations and groups. A vast majority does not like what Bush has done to Iraq. But the feedback I get from these concerned, rational folks in the audience is that we can't simply pullout and leave the Iraqis stranded with no security force of their own, that two wrongs do not make a right. Just as many Iraqis tell me they hate the occupation, they want the troops to leave—but not just yet.

But when? And where does the American peace movement draw the line between an earlier message of "No War Against Iraq" which talked incessantly about caring about the Iraqi people and their plight, to sending a new message that involves pulling up the tent poles in Iraq at a possibly a greater potential risk to Iraqi lives?

There is no doubt that Americans would like their troops to come home. A CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll taken August 5-7 shows that 54 percent of Americans feel that the US made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, and that the war has not been worthwhile. As to withdrawal of troops, 33 percent say all should be withdrawn, 28 percent say troop levels should stay the same, 23 percent say some should be withdrawn, and 13 percent say more should be sent. Sixty-four percent say the Iraq war has made the US less safe from terrorism, and 61 percent disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq.

The question is: When does the US withdraw troops and under what circumstances for the Iraqis? In the Bush administration's careless and flagrant display of incompetent and disorganized power, it destroyed the Iraqi infrastructure, dismantled their security systems, and literally opened a Pandora's box of horror while plopping down the worst of American bureaucracy in Baghdad. In mid-August I received a call from a former Iraqi interpreter-turned-IT-systems installer, whom I will call Farhad (not his real name), who was currently working in Baghdad's Green Zone. According to him, it will be no simple Shiite vs. Sunni civil war if the troops leave. "No," he said, "it will be much worse, it will be a war of the militias." A war where blood will flow in even greater volume than it is now, as the different groups vying for power and control will cut "the others" down in larger numbers than in the aftermath of the first Gulf War when the first President Bush withdrew American forces and left those who had risen up—mostly Shiite thinking Saddam would be ousted—to his deadly retaliation. Not to mention the chance of violence breaking Iraq's borders to become a regional conflagration.

Later in the month we spoke again. He said he wanted to leave Iraq. Here is an excerpt of our conversation:

LT: Why do you want to leave Iraq?
F: Why? Because even if I will get a good paying job here, I am not safe. Each time I leave the Green Zone, I mention God's name. I say, "This is the last day of my life." I can't just spend all my life this way.

LT: What do you think about the government in your country?
F: Which government? There is chaos here and the coming situation is going to be more serious, more tough. The constitution is not approved by maybe 50 percent of the nation. Because there are two to three wings of the political weather. The secular one, the Islamic one, and the Federalism one. So each is pulling in a different angle, a different direction. Islamic people would like to turn this country into an Islamic one. The Kurds and some people would like a territory for federalism. The secular people hate all of this and would like to see a unified Iraq and keep a secular government like Saddam's government, which is led by Allawi, if you remember the name—the former Prime Minister. So Iraq is on the edge now. On the edge of the cliff.

LT: Would it be better if the American troops left?
F: No. This is going to be the end of this country. Because now the struggle is political. If there will be no power to control this struggle it will be a military struggle, which is the worst. As long as the struggle is political it is not going to hurt that much. The problem is that this struggle might grow into clashes, a military combat one. People like to seize power.

LT: Who wants to seize power? How many people want to seize power? How many different groups want to seize power?
F: [There] are a lot of political powers here. Everyone would like to seize power. [There] are a lot of political parties here. All have militias. All have power here. You know about them. [There] are maybe like 15 groups that are very powerful and organized. They have militias, they have political organizations. They are now struggling. They didn't agree on certain drafts of the constitution. They delayed that for a week. In case they don't reach an agreement this government will be canceled and new elections will be held. It is a big hassle.

Cindy Sheehan left Camp Casey to deal with rising family issues on August 18, but her message remains the same: "Bring the troops home now." She has the right to demand this. But her personal, grief-driven demand does not coincide with the reality on the ground in Iraq, a country that did not ask for a US occupation but now is too far down a long, insecure, and bloody road leading to an as-of-yet undefined "freedom." If the US withdraws immediately, there's the potential for unimaginable violence, and possibly a larger, regional war.

So we are left with demanding questions: How and when do we bring our troops home from Iraq? What plan can be implemented to safeguard the Iraqis? These questions also raise a more ominous unspoken question: With death after death of US soldiers—our children—who are lacking in material and numbers to do the job at hand, are more troops needed on the ground? If the answer is yes, where will they come from? This administration has shut the door to any and all help from other nations lining up to help, repeating the mantra: "we can do this alone." Will a draft be installed? Will we allow the UN to bring in a "peacekeeping" force to replace an outgoing "occupation" force, possibly the best case scenario I can see? But most importantly, can the warriors of both sides sit down at a table and work, not fight, toward peace?