Sheehan anti war protest over

As anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's protest outside President Bush's ranch comes to an end, her supporters are embarking on a three-week bus tour of the country to continue rallying people against the war in Iraq.

The "Bring Them Home Now Tour" stops in Dallas and Austin Wednesday as it winds its way to a planned march in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 24.

Sheehan, who had pledged to remain at her Crawford camp for Bush's entire month long vacation unless he agreed to meet with her, said Tuesday she's glad Bush never showed up to discuss her son's death in Iraq because his absence "galvanized the peace movement."

"I look back on it, and I am very, very, very grateful he did not meet with me, because we have sparked and galvanized the peace movement," she said. "If he'd met with me, then I would have gone home, and it would have ended there," reports Washington Post.

According to SFGate, Phyllis Bennis, a fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank, said Sheehan's story had created a focal point for people who "know the war is wrong but don't know what to do about it."

"She put a human face on a war that has been described so far with abstract facts," Bennis said. "She gave people the answer as to what to do next: Bring the troops home now."

But Sheehan's opponents say her success was predicated on good timing.

"I'll give Cindy Sheehan credit for this: She happened to be in the right place at the right time, surrounded by the right people," said Melanie Morgan, a conservative radio host at San Francisco's KSFO who organized a counter- protest last weekend in Crawford that drew 2,000 people.

"But a lot of people think that what she is doing is jeopardizing the young men and women over in Iraq by emboldening the terrorists," Morgan said. "Cindy Sheehan's 15 minutes of fame are over."