When he's old enough, he'll make his own decisions. And maybe it'll be one his Mom doesn't like.

That's what happened to Cindy Sheehan. Her son signed up in 2000 (before 9/11 or anything else that might have inspired a normally non-military person to sign up), and his mother was violently anti-military. Her far-left views on many things she has spoken on are not something that suddenly appeared in the past five years.

Then he re-enlisted, when the Iraq war was in full bloom, knowing full well he would end up over there.

This much is fact. The following is speculation on my part:

I can imagine Cindy gave her son a lot of crap about enlisting, even when it was a safe choice, and when he re-enlisted during a war, she must have blown a gasket at him, driven both by her anti-military views and her concern for his safety.

When he was killed after that, it's small wonder her mind collapsed. I don't know what kind of conversations she'd been having with her son, but I suspect they weren't supportive of his actions. I've read milblogs (not many) from military people whose parents didn't think much of the military.

For many, many months Sheehan was, as far as the press was concerned, the only Gold Star mother in America. Now, she's pretty much out of the picture, but she did a lot of damage to other mothers with family in the war zones while she was an icon.

Sheehan campaigning in front of San Francisco City Hall last month