Troops supporters want Sheehan's Crawford plot

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Days after Cindy Sheehan announced she was stepping down as the face of the anti-war movement, a pro-troop organization said today that it plans to buy her 5-acre protest site in President Bush's adopted hometown.

But Sheehan doesn't want to sell to just anyone.

"It'll be a cold day in hell before she sells it to them," her sister, Dede Miller, told The Associated Press. "She'll sell it to them for $5 million."

Move America Forward wants to place a monument to the troops on the site in Crawford, about 100 miles south of Fort Worth.

"There's definitely symbolism behind being able to take that land and being able to put up a monument that supports our troops," said Robert Dixon, executive director of the Sacramento-based group. "It's purely symbolic. We're not going to be holding any rallies there."

Sheehan, who was unavailable for comment, plans to sell the land on eBay as early as next week with a starting bid of $80,000, Miller said. Since she bought the property last year for $52,500, Sheehan's group has made many improvements, including putting in gravel roads, clearing brush, mowing and planting gardens, Miller said.

Dixon said that after Sheehan's announcement Monday, he was "flooded" with e-mails from Move America Forward members who thought the group should buy the land. The non-profit organization had planned to erect a monument to honor U.S. troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, possibly in Crawford, so "we figured this is the perfect thing to do," Dixon said.

He said the group is "pretty much prepared to do what we have to do" to get the land but does have a price limit, which he declined to disclose. The group retained a California real estate agent to start working on the deal and also will start raising money, Dixon said.

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The article does not say what improvements are on the land, but a gravel road certainly does not add $30,000 of value to acreage. At most it may be worth $3000 more. I think the troop supporters can probably get a better deal looking at other property in the area and not enrich the anti war pukes who bought this little track.