The sliming of Cindy Sheehan, Chapter 2McBride joins the McCarthyism revival

Joseph Welch, left, asks Sen. Joseph McCarthy: "Have you no decency?"

The Republican effort to discredit Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who lost a son in Iraq, knows no bounds. As her lonely vigil begins to look like the beginnning of a real anti-war movement, the anti-Sheehan rhetoric gets more shrill and the attacks get more vicious.

WTMJ Radio's Charlie Sykes was one of the first to spread the red-baiting of Sheehan,doing his best Joe McCarthy imitation to try to link her to Communists, as I reported here and here last week.

Today, Jessica McBride joins the McCarthyism Squad, relying on Slimemeister Drudge for this Six Degrees of Separation smear of Sheehan:

Among the organizations aligned with Sheehan in Crawford is a group called Code Pink and one of its leaders, radical activist Medea Benjamin, who once praised living in Communist Cuba as "heaven." Sheehan has openly written on her Web Site of the help from Code Pink. One Web Site says of Benjamin:

Many of the causes that Ms. Benjamin espouses are Communist in nature. For instance, most of the major anti-war demonstrations at which she has spoken were organized by the Workers World Party , a Marxist-Leninist organization that openly supports Kim Jong Il's dictatorship in North Korea and proudly proclaims its dedication to "fight[ing] against capitalism" in America's "racist, sexist society." In years past, she vehemently opposed U.S. military aid to those fighting against Communist forces in Central America. Passionately anti-capitalist, Benjamin is widely credited as a chief organizing force behind the 1999 Seattle riots in which 50,000 protesters did millions of dollars worth of property damage in their effort to
shut down meetings of the World Trade Organization. During the last week of December 2004, Benjamin announced in Amman, Jordan that Global Exchange, Code Pink, and Families for Peace would be donating a combined $600,000 in medical supplies and cash to the terrorist insurgents who were fighting American troops in Fallujah, Iraq.

I don't use the McCarthy comparison lightly. It is not a term I throw around. But in this case it is entirely appropriate. The tactics and techniques of guilt by association are all too familiar. What's going on is McCarthyism, pure and simple. Matt Rothschild at The Progressive has been posting some of the hateful rhetoric from right-wing Internet sites, which will turn your stomach.

I asked Sykes last week the famous question asked of Joe McCarthy: Have you no decency? He didn't respond or defend himself, although he reads this blog.

Jessica, it's your turn. Have you no decency?