White House sources report that while Karl Rove is irked at Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mom, he is telling GOP operatives to thank their lucky stars the woman is not demanding to talk to President Bush about the price of gasoline.
For the time being Mr. Bush has decided to stick to his I’m-grieving-my-guts-out line pending a report from the FBI on whether or not Sheehan is an Irish or Arabic name. Sheehan or Al Shee’han has turned aside WH staffer requests to see her paperwork.
In addition to the Al Shee’han Texas camp-out, the big problem confronting Mr. Bush is the countdown to the 2,000th American death in Iraq. Bush strategists cannot decide if his best move is to hide the 2,000th body at Dover Air Force Base and make like it’s business as usual or apply the wisdom of Stalin and make public new figures revealing hundreds of thousands of other deaths, even if they are Iraqi.
If choosing the latter approach, the Pentagon would do video press releases of an infinity of headstones seen through the flag doing a patriotic wind ripple. This would expose Al Shee’han as a publicity seeker with only one war death to her credit.
Also under consideration: Assemble all 2,000 Gold Star moms and introduce them at the climax of the Super Bowl half time show. The moms, waving small US flags, would ride in open hybrid American-made (including Chrysler Daimler) cars to demonstrate the President is also grieving over fuel prices.
Meanwhile GOP insiders are going nuts after learning that Al Shee’han is teaching herself to play the ukelele prefatory to going on the Letterman Show to sing:
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy,
Who dares to put a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It’s time to lay the sword and gun away,
There’d be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.
by Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi (1915)