It’s easy to see why Cindy Sheehan, the 48-year-old mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, has become the new face of the anti-war movement, featured in a New York Times editorial on Tuesday and a Maureen Dowd column yesterday morning. Camped out in Crawford, Texas, near President Bush’s ranch, she’s a more sympathetic face than a lot of the alternatives. But as sad as Ms. Sheehan’s loss is – and we don’t belittle it – she has put herself in league with some extreme groups and individuals.

For starters, Ms. Sheehan has been posting on Michael Moore’s Web site, writing, “We have such a strong coalition of groups. GSFP, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and the Crawford Peace House. I talked with John Conyers today and he wrote a letter to George signed by about 18 other Congress members to request that he meet with me. I also talked to Maxine Waters tonight and she is probably going to be here tomorrow.”

It turns out that the Crawford Peace House Web site includes a photo depicting the entire state of Israel as “Palestine,” and it carries a link to a report that when Prime Minister Sharon visited Crawford, the “peace house” greeted him with an “800-foot-long banner containing all of the United Nations resolutions that Israel is in violation of.” The Crawford Peace House site also features a photo of Eugene Bird, who has suggested that Israeli intelligence was responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out all have representatives on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war umbrella group. They share that distinction with the Communist Party USA. UPJ organized the march during the 2004 Republican Convention in New York, at which a New York Sun poll of 253 of the protesters found that fully 67% of those surveyed said they agreed with the statement “Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance.” In other words, Ms. Sheehan’s “coalition” includes a lot of people who think the persons who killed her son were justified.

United for Peace is nonetheless flogging Ms. Sheehan’s story in the run-up to its big weekend of “civil disobedience” and “direct action” next month in Washington. That protest is timed to coincide with the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, so that the people who were throwing rocks at Starbucks in Seattle to protest free trade back during the Clinton administration can now make common cause with the anti-war movement.

This story, among others, is being followed on the new blog of The New York Sun, Itshinesforall.com, where our Ira Stoll noted that news of Mr. Conyers and Ms. Waters’s involvement with Ms. Sheehan fits with the rest of the picture. Mr. Conyers was the host of a Democratic “hearing” in June on the Iraq war that his fellow Democrat, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, protested was a forum for “people motivated by anti-Semitic or anti-Israel animus.” Ms. Waters is still best known for having endorsed the conspiracy theory that the CIA caused the crack epidemic in American cities. The whole crowd gains more from its association with Ms. Sheehan than she gains from her association with it.