Due to a sympathetic, agenda-driven media, a slow news month, and support from high-powered Liberal groups, most people know who Cindy Sheehan is. (Pop quiz: without looking it up, can you put a face to any other parent who lost a child in Iraq?) For those who don't, she's the anti-Bush demonstrator who's allowed the loony Left fringe to use her son's death in Iraq as an attack on the President for liberating Iraq, as well as a shield from any examination of their accusations or motives. She's become a human megaphone, allowing every Left-wing lunatic with an axe to grind to blast accusations and demands through her. She has said the US had no business overthrowing the Taliban, demanded that Israel withdraw from "Palestine" (which, according to Palestinians, includes Israel), claimed we're waging a "war for oil," and asserted that "this country is not worth dying for."

I feel really badly for Cindy Sheehan. The poor woman's grief over her son's death has been hijacked by far Left radicals to further their own ends; when they're done using her they'll just toss her aside. She might do a couple of talk shows, put her name and face on a ghost-written book, and then vanish back into the obscurity she enjoyed when she praised President Bush for being "sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis".

In the meantime, she's allowed the "usual suspects" to use her like the family car -- everyone gets to borrow it to run their own errands. Groups like MoveOn.org (owned by George Soros, and claiming ownership of the Democrats), United for Peace and Justice and Code Pink (both wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Heinz Family Foundation by way of Global Exchange and the Tides Corporation) have gotten into the act. If she were in her right mind, would she ally with the kind of people who actively root against America in favor of our enemies? Obviously, the poor woman is unhinged by grief. Her entire family is begging her to stop this travesty. She ought to listen to them.

Cindy's descent into madness has been sad, even tragic. Still, it does not grant her the right to demand that the President give her an opportunity to spew radical Liberal anti-war propaganda at him for the media's benefit. I'm sorry for the loss of her son, as I believe most everyone is. But I'm also sorry for the loss of her dignity and self-command, and her loss of respect for her son. For by allying herself with the same people who call his killers heroes or freedom fighters and compare them to Minutemen, she has repudiated what he believed in. He was killed by people trying to put a nation back in chains. She is letting others use Casey's death to attack what he held dear enough to put himself in danger to achieve -- a free and stable democratic Iraq.

Casey Sheehan should have made front-page news as a hero of the Iraq war -- a 24-year-old man who re-enlisted to go with his unit to Iraq, and volunteered for the dangerous rescue mission during which he was killed. Instead of a hero, he's portrayed as a witless child who earned and deserved no honors. His mother lamented that she should have "taken him to Canada," as though, in some fantasy of hers, he had been drafted and wanted to escape. If she had done so, Casey would have come straight back to do his duty. "That’s all he wanted to do was serve God and his country his whole life," his sister Carly told the Associated Press when he died. That's not the duped little boy we hear about from the protesters in Crawford.

Mrs. Sheehan has left Crawford and her patchwork group of supporters, requesting the media give her privacy after weeks of seizing every possible opportunity to grab the spotlight. Her mother has suffered a stroke, and will hopefully recover in a Los Angeles hospital. Meanwhile, I wonder what it would look like were the tables turned, with anti-Cindy protesters demanding impossible answers to senseless questions.

LOS ANGELES (CA) - President Bush and his supporters have set up a camp outside the hospital where Cindy Sheehan's mother is recovering from a stroke, despite Sheehan's request for privacy. "We are not leaving until Cindy comes out to tell us the real reason for her mother's stroke," demanded the President. "I just want to ask why."

Bush supporters and other anti-hospital groups have littered the hospital grounds with crosses bearing the names of stroke, diabetes and cancer victims, without asking the families of those victims for permission to do so. "We're here to save people from debilitating strokes and other diseases, by protesting this and all hospitals," said an unnamed protester. "Doesn't anyone see the obvious link between hospitals and illness? You always find sick people in hospitals!"

The National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control have sent spokespeople to explain that the protesters are reversing cause and effect, to no avail. Despite claims that hospitals don't cause diseases, but help victims recover from them, the protesters remain unconvinced. President Bush has his own explanation for strokes, in particular. "We know that Mama Sheehan's stroke was caused by the close proximity of the Moon to Earth," stated the President. "People will continue to fall victim to these deadly attacks until the Moon is forced to move out of Earth's orbit." The President and his supporters demand that this be done immediately, though how they expect the feat to be accomplished they cannot say.

Other hospital protesters blame various illnesses on the decline of astrology as a reliable guide to stock market investing, the rise in celebrity trials resulting in acquittals, elf arrows and Michael Moore. Some people, marrying their own cause to that of President Bush, compared Moore to the Moon. All are agreed, however, that the link between sickness and hospitals is undeniable, citing the fact that more disease victims can be found in hospitals than in any other place.

"They call it 'recovering' and 'healing,' but we know that hospitals are the place to find all sorts of diseases and ailments," a slick, professionally-produced anti-hospital leaflet reveals. "That's where people go to 'study' such things." A color-coded map of LA showing the highest concentrations of illnesses in the city validates the anti-hospital claim, showing large colored dots at the location of every hospital.

President Bush and the protesters are vowing to maintain their vigil at the hospital as long as Cindy Sheehan remains inside, or until she agrees to a personal meeting with the President. "I can't wait to tell her to her face how wrong she is for letting this hospital give her mother a stroke." He added apprehensively, "I only hope she won't schedule the meeting during a full moon."

This map proves the link between hospitals and illnesses. Concentrations of diseases and medical problems are shown in yellow, while locations of hospitals are shown in red. Coincidence? *

* Yes, this is satire.