Anti-war groups ready to celebrate

Cindy Sheehan and the anti-war crowd are getting ready to par-tay! What fun! They're about to celebrate the 2,000th death among American troops in Iraq.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cindy Sheehan, the military mother who made her son's death in Iraq a rallying point for the anti-war movement, plans to tie herself to the White House fence to protest the milestone of 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq.

"I'm going to go to Washington, D.C. and I'm going to give a speech at the White House, and after I do, I'm going to tie myself to the fence and refuse to leave until they agree to bring our troops home," Sheehan said in a telephone interview last week as the milestone approached.

"And I'll probably get arrested, and when I get out, I'll go back and do the same thing," she said.

The death toll among U.S. military forces since the March 2003 invasion stood at 1,996 on Sunday.

You'll excuse me if I've gone a little overboard in characterizing them as ready to celebrate. But it was the anti-war crowd that yelled at us before the invasion in 2003 that "tens of thousands of Americans will die" if everything didn't go perfectly. Now it's 2-1/2 years after the invasion and we've had 1,996 killed. Every one of these men and women is an incalculable loss, but where's the accountability for the grotesque exaggeration about casualties? There is none. Being a leftwinger means never having to say you're sorry. And worse, this same group is looking forward to the 2000th death to turn it into a morbid platform for protest.

"On the day after the 2,000th reported U.S. military death in Iraq, people will gather in communities across the U.S. to say that the countries pro-peace majority wants Congress to stop the deaths by stopping the dollars that are funding the war," a coalition of anti-war groups said online at www.afsc.org.

"The clock has stopped ticking for 2,000 Americans in Iraq, and once again there is a media craze, another reason for people to pay closer attention to the human cost of a lie, but for how long this time?" said Camilo Mejia, an Iraq combat veteran who served a year in prison for refusing to return to the war in Iraq.

What's stopping these groups from protesting today that 1,996 American troops have been killed? Nothing. But they want to wait for four more deaths so they can have a magic, round number. And believe me, you'll hear it all over in the press.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike. Here's LGF and Michelle Malkin using similar language.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein weighs in with another conversation between Cindy Sheehan and Billy Jack, with the latter noting that there has to be enough cake at the party to feed the protesters because the 1000 Dead party had only some "bite-sized Twix bars and a half-tin of cinnamon Altoids."