This one is so blatantly appalling that even the New York Times is aghast. What a sickening display we have to look forward to, and what an offense this political manipulation is to the victims of the attacks. Via TruthOut:

Walking the Wrong Way

New York Times Editorial

Sunday 21 August 2005

The Bush administration has announced plans for a Freedom Walk on Sept. 11, which will start at the Pentagon and end at the National Mall, and include a country music concert. The event is an ill-considered attempt to link the Iraq war to the terrorist attacks of 2001, and misguided in almost every conceivable way. It also badly misreads the public's mood. The American people are becoming increasingly skeptical about the war. They want answers to hard questions, not pageantry.

Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan called her mother's stroke a "devastating blow" that has forced her to leave "Camp Casey" temporarily. She left Crawford, TX, Aug. 18 to be by her mother's side at a Los Angeles hospital. In a message posted on Michael Moore's website, Sheehan said her fellow protesters will "keep up the pressure on the president to meet with us and answer questions about the war."

With the following pithy statement, the two monoliths of the anti-war movement in the US have agreed to cooperate on a joint demonstration in Washington next month:

The two major antiwar coalitions that have initiated and organized for a massive anti-war March on Washington for September 24 have agreed to organize a joint rally followed by a joint march. Both coalitions will organize under their own banners, slogans, and with their own literature for the September 24 demonstration. The joint rally will begin at 11:30 am at the Ellipse in the front of the White House. We urge everyone around the country to unite and come out for the largest possible anti-war demonstration on September 24.

1980s nostalgia fans should enjoy the political battle which is heating up in Nicaragua, even if the sides are more confused this time around. Hopefully, the situation will not come to armed conflict this time, but echoes of the war that rocked the country 20 years ago are being raised.

After 12 days camping out with supporters on the roadside near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX, Cindy Sheehan announced Aug. 18 she was leaving because her mother in Southern California just suffered a stroke. "I'll be back as soon as possible if it's possible," she said. After hugging some of her supporters, Sheehan and her sister, Deedee Miller, departed for the Waco airport.

Louai Sakra, a supposed al-Qaeda operative held responsible for the November 2003 bombings in Istanbul and plans to launch attacks against cruise liners carrying Israeli tourists in Turkish ports, was arrested by Turkish authorities in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir last week. The apprehension of the Syrian national was hailed by the British embassy as "a significant success in the global struggle against Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations." (MSNBC, Aug. 17)

With the northern border town of Nuevo Laredo occupied by Mexican federal agents following a wave of deadly violence between rival drug mafias, the resort city of Acapulco in southern Guerrero state may be headed in the same direction. Under a deal Guerrero politicians negotiated last week with the federal government, Acapulco will be the first beach resort to receive teams of federal agents and soldiers, under the same "Operation Safe Mexico" program created for Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas state on the Texas border, and Culiacan, Sinaloa. Already, 100 federal police have arrived to boost security, officials said. Guerrero's new governor, Zeferino Torreblanca, said federal help is needed in light of some two dozen suspected drug-related killings in recent months. But he said he doesn't want army tanks along Acapulco Bay, visited by 1.5 million tourists every year, including 150,000 US citizens.

Cindy Sheehan's brave protest encampment down the road from the Bush ranch in Crawford, TX, where the commander-in-chief is vacationing as the corpses pile up in Iraq, has succeeded in grabbing national attention in a way that countless of unimaginative anti-war rallies never have. All too predictably, this success is being met with violent harassment--including intentional desecration of the "Arlington West" cemetery activists have established, made up of hundreds of white crosses emblazed with the names of soldiers killed in Iraq (including, of course, Cindy's son Casey). Reports William Rivers Pitt in an on-the-scene Aug. 16 account for TruthOut: