If I understand Mrs. Sheehan correctly, her anger is based on a belief that her son’s death may, indeed, have been meaningless. That her son, and all our other soldiers, and the citizens of Iraq were sent to war because of lies and manipulations by the president and his allies. That she and others who once supported this president and believed in the rightness of his actions in conducting this war were mistaken. Their support was based on a belief that he was telling us the truth, and they now feel there is evidence that very nearly everything he told us was a lie.

All of us would prefer to think that our loved ones who have died an untimely death had died for a reason. Mrs. Sheehan’s bravery in being willing to discard the comfort of this belief and hold accountable those who have caused unnecessary death, disruption, mutilation and untold pain to thousands of Americans and Iraquis strikes me as a most moving memorial to her son. It takes extraordinary courage to see that your son’s patriotism was callously and cynically exploited for political and (in some cases) financial gain.

I see no signs that Mrs. Sheehan is being exploited now. I see her helping to give voice to the millions of people who want the manipulation and suppression of information, the exploitation of patriotism, and the senseless killing of two countries’ citizens to stop. Hating Bush won’t accomplish that — true. But forcing him to answer honest questions and give an accounting of his actions to us — the people he works for — might. Mrs. Sheehan honors the meaning of her son’s life (and the lives of all the other victims of war) when she refuses to allow their sacrifice to be exploited for the political advancement of the people who had them needlessly killed in the first place.