AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Andrea Hackett, who was also there. Her daughter is currently serving Iraq. Andrea is now active with the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice.

ANDREA HACKETT: I’m also against the war, always have been against the war from the beginning. I’m mad. I’m angry. You know, I’m angry. I want to see — first of all I want to see the troops come back home. I really do. Now, I understand that they’re caught up in a quagmire over there, but they didn’t ask — okay, this is because of the Bush administration, okay? And they’re policy, okay?

Their policy doesn’t care about our troops. Their policy doesn’t care about our — about their lives, as you can see by the crosses lined up when I came in here and crosses here that represent — what greater cause is there than to lay down your life for your country? And this is what the troops have done, okay?

And I feel really deeply with the mothers who have lost — no, I didn’t lose my daughter, but every time I — every time I hear about a troop — about one of the soldiers getting blown up over there or dying or coming back maimed, I feel the pain, I feel the pain as if it was my own.

I am a mother, okay? And all of us mothers have a certain code that we go by, and that is that our children are first, okay? Our children come first. And when they are harmed based on a war that’s based on lies, we’re going to be angry. And that’s what Cindy is here to ask the President at least answer her question.

Now, why is it that the President can’t come out and answer her question, okay? Us mothers want to know this, okay? We want him — we want him to act like an executive officer that he is supposed to be. He represents the whole of the United States. He represents all of those troops that are laying their life down for this country and die for what they thought was the good cause. I think it’s just — I think it’s just a moral — a moral sin against them to have them fighting a war and not know exactly what they’re fighting for, because you lied to them.

I think that — I just read in the paper there are people who came here all the way from California, okay? They got into their caravans. They took flights, okay? And they came here to support Cindy, and you mean to tell me that the President can’t walk across the lawn or wherever he has to come and at least answer her question? He’s got a lot of questions to answer. Not just hers.

I just want to say, too, that since we can’t — we don’t have the power to go over there and really end this war, we’re just going to bring our — we’re going the issue right here to him, right to his house. Okay? Right into his neighborhood, right to his backyard. Let’s keep coming, okay? Let’s make this a big huge movement that he’s going to have to either answer to or go back to the White House and hide, okay? Hide back in the White House. We’ll meet him there, though, on September 24th, though.

AMY GOODMAN: Andrea Hackett, her daughter is serving in Iraq. She is with the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice. She was speaking on Saturday night at Camp Casey outside the presidential property, outside George Bush’s estate.