SHEEHAN: Pat Buchanan sees parallels between the anti-war cacophony now coalescing around Cindy Sheehan's drainage ditch encampment and the anti-Vietnam movement's attempt to destroy Nixon. It's hard to avoid the impression that Buchanan, an opponent of the Iraq war from day one, sides with the anti-Bush movement.

Put bluntly, the bottom is falling out of support for the commander in chief. What is remarkable is that no Democrat has stepped forward, as Gene McCarthy did, to lead an antiwar crusade and call for a date certain for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Cindy Sheehan is filling that vacuum.

Christopher Hitchens offers a blistering critique of Sheehan's dubious moral authority:

Sheehan has obviously taken a short course in the Michael Moore/Ramsey Clark school of Iraq analysis and has not succeeded in making it one atom more elegant or persuasive. I dare say that her "moral authority" to do this is indeed absolute, if we agree for a moment on the weird idea that moral authority is required to adopt overtly political positions, but then so is my "moral" right to say that she is spouting sinister piffle. Suppose I had lost a child in this war. Would any of my critics say that this gave me any extra authority? I certainly would not ask or expect them to do so. Why, then, should anyone grant them such a privilege?