Cindy Sheehan quits anti-war campaign

The war in Iraq has claimed another victim -- leaving the US peace movement without one of its most inspirational voices. The activist Cindy Sheehan has announced she is standing down from her position as the "face" of the anti-war movement, citing her frustration with the apathy of the US public and the failure of the Democratic Party to do more to bring the troops home. She said she has been routinely abused by both conservatives and liberals and accused of being an "attention whore." "I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost," wrote Sheehan on the website Daily Kos. Sheehan's son Casey, a US army reservist, was killed in April 2004. "I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade," Sheehan wrote. She first entered the public consciousness and overnight reinvigorated the US peace movement when, after her son's death, she camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch and refused to leave until he came out to meet her. Her presence there and the establishment of "Camp Casey" attracted activists from around the world. But while Sheehan may have expected criticism from conservatives and supporters of the war, she was surprised at the attacks that she often received from Democrats and liberals, some of whom complained that she sometimes strayed from delivering a simply anti-war message. She said she also irked some people within the peace movement, angry at the attention she received. "I have spent every available cent I got from the money a "grateful" country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then," she wrote. "I have sacrificed a 29-year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey's brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings." Sheehan, 49, said she had decided to stand down as a result of the recent failure of the Democrats to withhold funding for the Iraq war. Democrats initially passed a bill that included a requirement to withdraw US troops by next year but the measure was vetoed by President Bush. A subsequent $120 billion bill -- with no such timetable -- was passed last week. "The most devastating conclusion that I reached ... was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think," she wrote. "I have tried every day since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives."