ATTYTOOD: Cindy, Crawford, and the Bush Smear Machine

It's truly amazing what the human spirit can accomplish. From Gandhi's Salt March to Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, a single person can fight a corrupt establishment and win -- when truth and justice is on his or her side.

Now, in 2005, along comes Cindy Sheehan, the California woman whose altar-boy son Casey was killed in Iraq last year. As you may have heard, Sheehan and some supporters have been camping out outside the Bush ranch in Crawford, Tex., refusing to leave until she gets a meeting with the president. Already, her plight has drawn media attention and could mark a turning point in public resistance to the war in Iraq.

That's when the right-wing smear machine jumped into its swift boats and tried to pull a "Joe Wilson" on Sheehan before her plight captivates more folks out in TV Land. Today on the Drudge Report, an item appeared describing how Sheehan already did meet with Bush 14 months ago, shortly after her son died, and -- based on a forgotten article (not even online, although now it is) in a small paper in the Sheehan's hometown of Vacaville -- she had said some seemingly glowing things about George W. Bush.