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Cindy Sheehan: Obama's wars now

'System... stays the same, no matter who is in charge,' protester laments.

By Mark Silva / Chicago Tribune

Cindy Sheehan is back.

But this time, the war protester who lost her son, Casey, at war in Iraq, is not camped outside the Texas ranch of former President George W. Bush, who ordered the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

She is staking out the media on Martha's Vineyard, where President Barack Obama, who has pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq but is boosting the U.S. military deployment at war in Afghanistan, is spending a week's vacation.

Sheehan, who liked to pitch a "peace camp'' outside the vacationing Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas, showed up today outside the schoolhouse in Oak Bluffs, Mass., where reporters covering the vacationing Obama are working. The president is tucked away at Blue Heron Farm, a 28-acre rented estate, no brush clearing.

"The reason I am here is because ... even though the facade has changed in Washington DC, the policies are still the same," Sheehan told a handful of journalists, with a Camp Casey banner behind her. Calling on peace activists to wake up and protest Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and complaining that troops still remain in Iraq, she said: "We have to realize, it is not the president who is power, it is not the party that is in power, it is the system that stays the same, no matter who is in charge."

"We are here to make the wars unpopular again," Sheehan said.