Camp Casey

She has been called the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. Cindy Sheehan has been camped outside President George Bush's Texas ranch since 7 August.

Each day she remains there she is joined by scores of others, from Arkansas, California, Boston, Arizona, Idaho. At the time of writing they numbered 600. They keep on arriving from across the United States to stand with an American mother who lost her soldier son in Iraq. On 4 April 2004, eight US soldiers were killed when their Humvee was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. One of those who died was Casey Sheehan, the 24 year old, eldest child of Cindy and Patrick Sheehan.

The encampment of protestors established in Crawford, Texas, close to the gates of the Bush ranch has been named Camp Casey. Cindy Sheehan has become the new beacon of the anti-war movement in the US and an increasing embarrassment for the Bush administration, but most especially for Bush. She wants to meet with the President. Not like she did in June 2004 when, with other families of "fallen heroes", all she wanted to do was make sure the president understood just how much of a loved and loving son she had lost. George Bush told her and her husband, that Casey had died for a "noble cause".

Cindy Sheehan has moved beyond those first weeks of immobilising grief and now she is angry. So angry that she wants to ask the President, "If it's such a noble cause, have you asked your daughters to enlist?" Bush has had plenty of free time to talk to his girls about the idea. The Washington Post estimates that George W has spent 20 per cent of his time in office as president vacationing at his ranch. He is currently enjoying a five-week sojourn there, despite the rapidly deteriorating picture in Iraq and the loss of almost 2000 troops since the invasion.

Unfortunately for Bush, Sheehan cannot be written off as an emotionally distraught mother acting out of blind anguish. She has founded Gold Star Families for Peace, an organisation of military families opposed to the continuation of US military involvement in Iraq. The tide of public opinion in the US would appear to be with Sheehan and the Gold Star Families, with a recent Newsweek poll finding that 61 per cent of Americans feel that the war in Iraq is wrong.

Sheehan has become dangerous news and US media's right wing has gone into overdrive to discredit her and her message. Gung-ho radio show hosts both nationally and within the Texas area have been urging on pro-war Bush supporters to demonstrate outside Camp Casey and several confrontations took place over the past weekend between the two sides.

To counter the passivity of the mainstream media and the more vicious element of neo-conservative pundits, Ben Cohen, one of the original founders of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, has provided practical support to Sheehan's campaign. He has financed a public relations firm to work on her behalf to get the message out, including a television advertisement broadcast on local Texas channels. Cohen is not the only influential backer Sheehan has attracted. Joe Trippi, who was the political consultant behind Howard Dean's early successes in the Democratic Presidential nomination race in 2004, has been using his contacts to get Sheehan coverage through internet interviews. The internet is proving to be an effective recruiter for Camp Casey. Just google Sheehan's name and the results show that scores of anti-war blogs and alternative media sites are providing information on how to get to Crawford or where to donate funds to help others get there. Within a day of her arrival at Crawford, Cindy Sheehan's solitary camp-out in sweltering heat and 90-per-cent humidity had swelled to 50 people, within 3 days there were over 100 and the numbers keep rising.

Bush has been polite but firm. He will not see Specialist First Class Casey Sheehan's mother, but he purports to understand her grief and to endorse her right to her opinion. He can do nothing else: in his own lexicon of meaningless rhetoric, Cindy Sheehan is the mother of a "patriot". It was Dr Johnson who said that "patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel" and one mother is determined to demolish that refuge for Bush.

In a statement she gave at the start of her protest Sheehan made very clear her intentions: "I'm going to be out here until one of three things happens: its 31 August and the President's vacation ends and he leaves Crawford; they take me away in a squad car or, he finally agrees to speak with me. If he does, he'd better be prepared for me to hold his feet to the fire. If he starts talking about freedom and democracy, or about how the war in Iraq is protecting America, I'm not going to let him get away with it. This is George Bush's accountability moment."