President passes protesting mother

CRAWFORD, Texas – President Bush on Friday passed within 100 feet of the roadside encampment where the mother of an Iraq war casualty was inviting him to stop and talk, but his motorcade passed by the protest site without making contact.

The fleeting encounter between the president’s entourage and the antiwar assembly organized by Cindy Sheehan occurred near Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch, where he and first lady Laura Bush are spending a five-week summer vacation.

On their way to a Republican fund-raising event at a neighbor’s ranch about three miles away, the Bushes passed directly by Camp Casey, the tent camp named after Sheehan’s son, a 24-year-old Army mechanic who was killed in action in Iraq.

Although she met briefly with Bush after her son’s death in April 2004, Sheehan has said she wants to talk to the president again about her objections to the war effort. She began her vigil Saturday and has promised to stay in Crawford until Bush either meets with her or returns to Washington, D.C., in early September.

As the president and first lady drove by shortly after 11 a.m. in a black Suburban sport-utility vehicle with tinted windows, Sheehan held up a sign asking, “Why do you make time for donors and not for me?”

Sheehan, of Vacaville, Calif., was joined by several dozen activists who stood behind a cordon of yellow police tape inside the triangular grassy median at the intersection of three country roads several miles west of Crawford. Facing them were at least a dozen Texas state troopers and county sheriff’s officers.

On Thursday, Bush expressed sympathy for Sheehan and others like her, but gave no indication that he planned to meet with her again. “She feels strongly about her position,” Bush said. “And she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America.”