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Bush Policies Embarrass US Citizens

Affirms peace activist Cindy Sheehan in Cuba

CUBA, January 8, 2007.- The atrocities committed by the Bush administration "are an embarrassment to many US citizens," said US "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan in Cuba on Sunday.

Embraced in the antiwar cause since she lost her 24-year-old son in Iraq, Sheehan spoke about the war against terrorism begun by her country and pointed out that more than 600,000 Iraqis and 3,000 US soldiers (in Iraq) have died as a result.

In an interview with Prensa Latina, Sheehan regretted that in the name of fighting terrorism the Bush administration tortures its prisoners at the Guantanamo Base, located on a territory occupied by the United States against the will of the Cuban people.

Sheehan spoke about how the death of her son changed her life, unable to hide her look of pain. She also spoke about her three other children saying that they support what she is doing.

Sheehan arrived to Cuba on Saturday along with four other women from the civic organization Code Pink: Women for Peace, which is calling for an end to the war in Iraq.

The group of pacifists will be joined by other US citizens and plan to march to the fence of the US military base in Guantanamo in eastern Cuba on Thursday, January 11 to demand the prison camp, established five years earlier, be shut down.

Sheehan said that their trip will coincide with the fifth anniversary of the prison’s opening in protest of the inhumane treatment given the prisoners, "who are jailed without a fair legal process."

The "peace mom," who has considered the struggle of the detainees her own, attended a church service on Sunday at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in the Havana municipality of Marianao and visited social projects in the densely populated Pogolotti neighborhood.

"We are here representing the US peace community, which struggles for understanding and peace for all peoples," Sheehan told the congregation.

"We may not speak the same language but our hearts speak the same one, the language of love, and on behalf of this love we are going to Guantanamo."

She also spoke about the warmth of the Cuban people and their hospitality and said she was happy to be in this Caribbean country "that dreamed of a better world."

Sheehan said she wants people in her country to come to Cuba and added that when she goes home she is going to work actively to try to end the US blockade of Cuba.

Sheehan is also the co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, created in 2005 by relatives of soldiers who died in Iraq and oppose the war.

With her humanitarian activism, which included a prolonged protest in front of the Bush ranch in Texas, Sheehan has become acquainted with the cause of Venezuela, Iran, North Korea and other countries that Washington unilaterally categorizes as part of an axis of evil.

"US citizens need to learn the other side of the story; we are here to learn the Cuban side of the story," concluded Cindy Sheehan. By Ulises Canales . (Cubaminrex- Granma)

 

 

 

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