Reply #26: Lourey, Rowley to join vigil at Bush ranch

[goodhue]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5563795.html

Last update: August 17, 2005 at 6:58 AM

Lourey, Rowley to join vigil at Bush ranch

Dane Smith and Greg Gordon, Star Tribune

August 17, 2005

Two Minnesota moms at the forefront of the anti-Iraq war movement, one of whom recently lost a son in the fighting, are flying to Crawford, Texas, on Thursday to join Californian Cindy Sheehan's expanding, and increasingly controversial, protest near President Bush's ranch.

State Sen. Becky Lourey, whose son, Matt, was killed piloting an Army helicopter earlier this year, and FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, a recently declared DFL candidate for Congress who spoke out early against invading Iraq, said they will join the stakeout at "Camp Casey" -- named in memory of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, 24, who was killed more than a year ago.

The Sheehan vigil is becoming a lightning rod and rallying point for opposition to the war, Lourey and Rowley said, while a Republican state leader described Sheehan's expanding vigil as a media circus.

"I just want to go down there and tell her that her voice is necessary and that she is doing it for the right reasons," Lourey said. "I'm doing it as Matt's mother but also because I'm upset by our country. I'm an American, I'm a patriot, I love the Army, but I don't like what our country and our commander-in-chief are doing."

Rowley said she is going to "show solidarity with that cause," but that she intends to stay "in the background, for moral support" for Lourey. Rowley, who is running against Republican U.S. Rep. John Kline in the suburban Third District south of the Twin Cities, has a daughter in the Navy ROTC program at the University of St. Thomas.

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http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5563795.html