The conservative attack machine is starting to turn up the heat against Cindy Sheehan, the mother who has turned her son’s death in Iraq into a crusade against the war. They know that her vigil outside President Bush’s Texas ranch could become a potent anti-war symbol if she isn’t smeared into submission first.

Enter (surprise!) Matt Drudge, who posted an article claiming Sheehan had “dramatically changed her account” about a private meeting with Bush in 2004. But as Media Matters and Salon’s Eric Boehlert have pointed out, Drudge was quoting the original article out of context; Sheehan had actually told the reporter that she opposed the war, but had decided not to express those feelings to Bush at the time. Nonetheless, the claim bounced around right-wing blogs before being picked up on two different Fox News shows.

Now, conservative pundits are trying to silence Sheehan with anti-democratic accusations that she is betraying her country. Here’s Bill O’Reilly:

I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this [publicity] and also for the responsibility for the other American families who lost sons and daughters in Iraq who feel this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.

A writer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution went even further, publishing a shameful op-ed devoted entirely to smearing Sheehan as a traitor:

The insurgents were Casey’s enemy. The president of the United States is his mother’s. What is wrong with this picture? Would he be proud of her near-treasonous actions? Hardly.

This woman is a representative example of typical, illogical anti-war activists. She thinks Bush, not the terrorists, killed her son. She supports those who killed Casey by wanting to pull out and let them kill more innocent people, unhindered. The lady is on the wrong team. She’s disgraceful.

If Sheehan wants to continue to make a fool out of herself, I suppose that is her business as a free American. Her son and our brave troops have given her even the right to orderly protest against the very actions providing the freedom that allows her to speak out.

My suggestion to her, however, is that she think about the lives of those still in Iraq. Undermining public support for our efforts in Iraq helps the enemy, her son’s murderers. They love people like her, but hate those like her heroic son.

I will repeat the point I made about the NARAL ad attacking John Roberts: Criticizing the war in Iraq doesn’t mean you support the insurgents, and filing a brief in a court case doesn’t mean you endorse the defendant’s actions. In a democracy governed by laws, people have a right to speak their mind freely, and an obligation to speak up for the correct application of the law to even the most loathsome criminal. We must not lose sight of those principles.

Update 8/12: I can’t resist linking to this item on Michelle Malkin’s hypocrisy in purporting to speak for Sheehan’s dead son.

Update 8/26: It’s worth noting that the New York Times corrected a story saying Bill O’Reilly called Sheehan treasonous. He did not say so directly. But he did suggest as much in the quote presented above — O’Reilly’s statement that Sheehan “bears… responsibility” for the perception of her actions as treasonous implies that he endorses such a view.