Speaking as a guest on The Randi Rhodes Show today, Cindy Sheehan said that a Republican PAC called Move America Forward is distributing press releases saying that she is funded by al Qaeda and white supremacists.

These are pretty harsh allegations, so I investigated them.

What has happened is that David Horowitz's Frontpage Magazine has taken comments she made on Nightline wildly out of context, suggesting that she is anti-Semitic. Horowitz is a loony who maintains that no matter what Israel does, it is always right, and no matter what the Palestinians do, they are always wrong. Horowitz weasles his way into college campuses through the benignly-named Students for Academic Freedom. Little do they know that "Academic Freedom" requires a radical pro-Israel policy (not that a pro-Israel policy is radical, but Horowitz's approach to a pro-Israel policy is radical).

Ben Johnson, a columnist at Frontpage Magazine, wrote an Aug. 18 column entitled "American Nazi Idol." The column makes the (fallacious) argument that, because David Duke wrote a column supporting Cindy Sheehan, it follows that Cindy Sheehan believes in what David Duke believes. But then there are these statements made by Sheehan in a letter to Nightline:

my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC [Project for a New American Century] Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel.

PNAC is a neo-con agenda. It was established in 1997 by such famous figures as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz as a neoconservative think tank. Their statement of principles, presented at their opening in 1997, gives you some indication as to what they think. It is no coincidence that the chief architects of the Iraq War were also the chief architects of an organization that believes in "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." Oh, and most of these people worked for Reagan, too.

As for her comment that her "son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel," how does this comment make her a Nazi? Partially it's because Horowitz views any criticism of Jews as hostile and on par with Nazism. Why? Because it's an easy trope to use, not because the analogy holds true. There are many "mainstream" people in the United States who are not Nazis who believe that America gives too much support to Israel. In fact, the amount of support we give Israel is one of the reasons that Arab countries don't particularly like us. Her comments about Israel may be on the extreme left of opinion concerning Israel, and I may not particularly agree with them, but these statements do not make her a white supremacist.

But funding by white supremacists? I haven't found anything to back that up, yet. Randi Rhodes also reports that, in private, Bush called the anti-war protestors in Crawford "m-fers" (only he used the full word) and said, regarding his meeting again with Sheehan, she can "go to hell." This is merely speculation, though.

UPDATE: This article from Capitol Hill Blue describes Bush's frequent White House "tirades." It also confirms that he said, regarding meeting again with Cindy Sheehan, "I'm not meeting again with that goddamned bitch. She can go to hell as far as I'm concerned!" Also, he called war protestors "m-fing traitors" (expletive deleted). In the opinion of a prominent Washington psychiatrist, Bush's actions are "all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear." Capitol Hill Blue is published by the Save America Foundation, "a not-for-profit, non-partisan educational foundation."

UPDATE: After doing some research on Capitol Hill Blue, I've concluded that it's probably not a credible website. It makes far too much mention of anonymous "aides" and "staffers," and besides, if this were true, the major newspapers would have jumped on it by now. So the Captiol Hill Blue article is probably nothing more than fiction. This online forum discusses the veracity of Capitol Hill Blue, which looks not very voracious. Or something like that.