Lynn C. Woolsey: “Cindy Sheehan, who was arrested yesterday for simply exercising her constitutional right to freedom of speech outside…”

“Cindy Sheehan, who was arrested yesterday for simply exercising her constitutional right to freedom of speech outside the White House, has awoken a sleeping American public. She deserves a great deal of credit for her tireless campaign against the Bush administration's lies and abuses which have governed the war in Iraq from the very beginning. Her campaign awakened the American people to realize just how awful this war truly is. This weekend over 300,000 Americans, and I know it was more than 100,000 as reported by the press because I was there, over 300,000 Americans demonstrated the same resolve as Cindy Sheehan by showing up in force at a rally in Washington, D.C. It was one of the first times since the 1970s that so many people had descended on the Nation's capital to protest a war. If strength of numbers demonstrates the injustice of a particular policy, then the thousands who participated in Saturday's march depicted the wrongness of the Iraq war. Most Americans know that the war in Iraq is not increasing our national security, that by continuing to fight an unwinnable war the President is ensuring our national insecurity. Most Americans know that the Bush administration had no plan for how to conduct the war. They had no plan for securing the country once Saddam was deposed; and now they have no plan for ending the war. Most Americans know the terror and chaos that plague Iraq cannot be resolved simply by staying the course.…”