Who Was SPC Casey Sheehan?

UPDATE

I've updated the Who IS Cindy Sheehan post to link to the Open Letter from a Mother whose son enlisted in the Army at Casey Sheehan's encouragement.

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Army SPC Casey Sheehan was the son of Cindy Sheehan. He was killed April 4, 2004 in Sadr City. But you wouldn't recognize him from his mother's description of him today.

His is not the story his mom tells of how he was an infantalized dummy who was fooled into joining up.

Army SPC Casey Sheehan was a war hero and he was a real man. Having recently reenlisted with the Army, SPC Sheehan volunteered to be part of a Quick Response Force (QRF) into Sadr City to rescue soldiers trapped by obstacles under serious enemy fire on the day of the heaviest fighting and most casualties suffered in Iraq since Baghdad's fall; known to the troops as Black Sunday.

Here is Melinda Liu's coverage of the battle for Newsweek. She says:

"Suddenly, Aguero found his unit heading into a Mad Max gauntlet of burning tires and road obstacles of every imaginable description: concrete blocks, metal market stalls, air conditioners, scrap metal, truck axles, even refrigerators. The burning debris put out so much choking black smoke that visibility was down to 300 meters. The street had become 'a 300-meter-long kill zone,' recalls Aguero. The vehicles swerved and ran onto sidewalks, rolling on the rims of flat tires, as gunmen kept up the barrage of bullets.”

Here is another one by Melinda Liu with Rod Norland.

Read the full story here by Ed Marek.

Ed Marek is not the writer that Liu is. His telling has more of the feeling of a "brain dump" than a careful ordering of the facts. But if you are patient, you will gather both a story of a tragic confluence of events and a saga of real heroes including SPC Sheehan.

He takes Liu's reporting and statements from participating soldiers to provide a military expert's account the Black Sunday operation. Point-by-point he fisks and elaborates on eye witness-statements and Liu's reporting of the events of that day, he provides an exceptional analysis of the events that combined to create a perfect storm for the soldiers of the 1st Armored Cavalry Division that day in southern Baghdad -- the most important of which to my mind is this:

The point we wish to leave you with here is that the Battle of Sadr City occurred on April 4, 2004. Formal changeover of responsibility for Baghdad and Sadr City occurred on April 15, 2004. For the April 4 battle, most soldiers had been there for only a week or two, and most of the officers had been there only a month. The commander responsible for the main thrust into Sadr City officially took command about 15 minutes after the battle got nasty. He fought valiantly, as did his soldiers, but one cannot ignore this timing when analyzing the April 4 battle.

Marek also reports how Sheehan volunteered for the mission to rescue his fellow soldiers -- he didn't have to, and he wasn't the only one:

"They had guys who normally don't fight who volunteered to help their buddies. There were guys fighting to get on that convoy."

Cindy Sheehan knows he volunteered for that mission despite now memorializing him has a useful idiot of the Neo-cons. Since we are letting her speak, lets hear what she said to Marek about this too:

“And the sergeant said, 'Sheehan, you don't have to go,' because my son was a mechanic.' And Casey said, 'Where my chief goes, I go.' "

Why should Cindy Sheehan's opinions carry more weight than SPC Sheehan's opinions?
His sister, Carly, said:

“He didn’t have to go,” said Sheehan’s 23-year-old sister, Carly. “He would do anything for anybody. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He was just a loving and caring person...That’s all he wanted to do was serve God and his country his whole life...He was a boy scout from age 6 or 7 and an Eagle Scout. It was kind of a natural progression to go into the military from that. He said he was enjoying the military because it was just like the boy scouts but they got guns.”

Check it out.