Cindy

Cindy Sheehan concerns pro-war supporters. Here's a woman who lost a son in Iraq and now calls for the withdrawal of troops from the country. What to do? Launch a massive smear campaign in a vain attempt to discredit her credentials. We've been largely spared the indignity in Australia - though one twit is happy to join the echo-chamber - but in America the conservative cabal is in full swing.

Media Matters provides a usual summary of the chicken hawks lining up to take a swing.

Sheehan has been called an "anti-Semite" (for daring to suggest the large amount of Jews behind the Bush administration) "engaged in Stalinist agitprop" (from Ann Coulter, America's answer to the shrill Miranda Divine) and a "nutbag" from Christopher Hitchens (once forthright and challenging before power and now hectoring a grieving mother. Brave stuff, indeed.)

Take this exchange on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes with former Nixon administration official G. Gordon Liddy:

"LIDDY: Well, I think that it's true that there are Americans who feel the way Cindy Sheehan does. Unfortunately, they are Americans who are very anti-Israel and, in some ways, anti-Semitic. She uses the term how the "neocons" are doing this thing - that's code word for "the Jews in the Pentagon." She has made statements such as -

ALAN COLMES (co-host): Are you calling her anti-Semitic?

LIDDY: Yes. If she gets Israel out of Palestine, then we can get out of Iraq. I mean, check out her statements, she's way out there.

COLMES: Cindy Sheehan's anti-Semitic?

LIDDY: Yes.

COLMES: That's outrageous.

SEAN HANNITY (co-host): It's outrageous what has been said.

ELEANOR CLIFT (Newsweek contributing editor): That is almost not worth responding to.

LIDDY: Look at her statements. Look at her statements and judge for yourself.

CLIFT: Look at your statements.

It is indeed almost not worth responding to, and yet while these "usual idiots" argue over Sheehan, Iraq descends even further into chaos.