Lourey, Rowley to join vigil at Bush ranch
08/17/2005
Dane Smith and Greg Gordon,
Star Tribune
August 17, 2005
Two Minnesota moms at the forefront of the anti-Iraq war movement, one of whom recently lost a son in the fighting, are flying to Crawford, Texas, on Thursday to join Californian Cindy Sheehan’s expanding, and increasingly controversial, protest near President Bush’s ranch.
State Sen. Becky Lourey, whose son, Matt, was killed piloting an Army helicopter earlier this year, and FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, a recently declared DFL candidate for Congress who spoke out early against invading Iraq, said they will join the stakeout at “Camp Casey”—named in memory of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, 24, who was killed more than a year ago.
The Sheehan vigil is becoming a lightning rod and rallying point for opposition to the war, Lourey and Rowley said, while a Republican state leader described Sheehan’s expanding vigil as a media circus.
“I just want to go down there and tell her that her voice is necessary and that she is doing it for the right reasons,” Lourey said. “I’m doing it as Matt’s mother but also because I’m upset by our country. I’m an American, I’m a patriot, I love the Army, but I don’t like what our country and our commander-in-chief are doing.”
Rowley said she is going to “show solidarity with that cause,” but that she intends to stay “in the background, for moral support” for Lourey. Rowley, who is running against Republican U.S. Rep. John Kline in the suburban Third District south of the Twin Cities, has a daughter in the Navy ROTC program at the University of St. Thomas.
A top Minnesota GOP official said the sacrifices of parents like Sheehan and Lourey should be respected, but that Rowley’s motives appear to be purely political.
“You have to have compassion for folks like Becky Lourey and Cindy Sheehan, who have lost sons in the war,” said Bill Walsh, the state party’s executive director. “I don’t need to question their motives, but I don’t think you should question the president’s motives either. He’s fully aware of the ramifications of sending people’s children into battle, but he has to balance that with the question of how do we best address the serious problems facing our world.”
Walsh was less kind to Rowley. “You can’t ignore the fact that Coleen Rowley is running for Congress right now,” he said. “It’s really unfortunate that she has to join the MoveOn.orgs, the Michael Moores and the left-wingers who are exploiting this circus for political gain.”
Rowley said her decision to go to Texas “has nothing to do with campaigning or politics ... I’m doing this as an individual.”
Rowley said she spoke at a Veterans for Peace conference in Dallas earlier this month and heard Sheehan present her protest plans. She said she would have gone straight to Crawford if her schedule had allowed it.
Rowley, a former Twin Cities-based FBI agent, gained fame in early 2002 while still serving as counsel to the Minneapolis division, when she publicly castigated FBI headquarters for impeding her office’s pre-Sept. 11 investigation of jailed terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui.
She contended that Minneapolis agents were denied access to clues that might have unraveled the suicide hijacking plot. She later was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year.”
Warned the FBI
Then, weeks before U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, Rowley made public a letter she had sent to FBI Director Robert Mueller warning against a preemptive strike. In it, she argued that a U.S. occupation would fan terrorism on a scale the bureau was not prepared to handle.
In Kline, Rowley is challenging a second-term Republican who also has impressive national security credentials. He’s a retired Marine Corps colonel who carried the bag containing nuclear weapons codes for Presidents Carter and Reagan, and he has been a staunch supporter of Bush and the war. Neither Kline nor his aides could be reached for comment Tuesday night.
Lourey, a DFLer from Kerrick who represents a district just south of Duluth, authored a Senate resolution in 2003 opposing the war. It failed, but she also has been supportive of and has expressed pride in her son’s career.
The Washington Post reported that at a Democratic Party campaign rally last year, as her son, was preparing to return voluntarily for a second tour of duty in Iraq, she railed against President Bush: “I don’t want any more chicken hawks making these decisions, lying to us about the reasons.”
Tensions rise
Meanwhile, there were signs Tuesday that tensions were escalating at the high-profile vigil in Crawford.
A man from nearby Waco drove to the protest camp in his pickup truck and deliberately ran over small crosses with the names of war dead planted by protesters along the road. Larry Northern, 46, was arrested and charged with criminal mischief.
On Tuesday, activist leaders agreed to move “Camp Casey” to another spot even closer to the president’s ranch.
“It makes it easier on the neighbors,” acknowledged one organizer, who requested anonymity because of the tense relationship between the community’s 705 permanent inhabitants and what may be approaching an equal number of temporary residents.
Some of those inhabitants asked county leaders Tuesday to prevent large gatherings near the Crawford ranch. Several residents have complained of blocked roads and traffic jams near the two-lane road leading to Bush’s ranch.
The petition with more than 60 signatures was submitted to the McLennan County Commission, asking the board to expand a no-parking zone that now bans cars within a few hundred feet of the ranch. If the ordinance passes, demonstrators might have to stay in Crawford, which is 7 miles away.
MoveOn.org, the liberal website, is organizing vigils across the nation, many of them to be held today, to back Sheehan. About 20 sites in the Twin Cities were listed on the group’s website Tuesday night.
The Los Angeles Times and Associated Press contributed to this report.