Is Sheehan a Spark or a Flicker?

Is Sheehan a Spark or a Flicker?: "Is Cindy Sheehan the spark igniting an antiwar movement that threatens the Bush presidency? Or is she just an over-hyped flicker that will be extinguished with the next turn of the news cycle?
The White House is counting on it being the latter. As the Washington Post's Jim VandeHei explained in a Live Online discussion yesterday: 'The White House thinks this whole story is a silly obsession of bored reporters with nothing better to do during the slow August.'

But with more than a thousand Sheehan-inspired vigils all over the country last night -- and a national conversation unleashed -- there are reasons to think the White House may be wrong.

A Conversation

Joe Garofoli writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: 'Vacaville resident Cindy Sheehan camped out near President Bush's vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas, in the hope of inspiring a national conversation about the war."


By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com