WASHINGTON: US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has announced she no longer wants to be the public face of the movement against the US-led invasion of Iraq, a cause she spearheaded following the death of her soldier son.

Ms Sheehan, who shot to fame when she camped out at President George Bush's Texas ranch in mid-2005 while he was holidaying there to protest the war, said she has become disillusioned with the struggle, which has ravaged her bank account, wrecked her marriage and strained her relationship with her surviving children.“This is my resignation letter as the 'face' of the American anti-war movement,” Sheehan wrote in a blog entry posted Monday -- the US Memorial Day holiday to commemorate fallen soldiers.

“I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost.” She said she made the decision to abandon the movement after about a year of deliberating.

“The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing,” she said in reference to her son, who was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

“I have tried every (day) since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful.

Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives.

“It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.”

She said she had lost faith in the anti-war movement's ability to make change and even in Democrats, who are largely opposed to the war and who took control of the House and Senate last year.

“Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity,” she said.

“I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither.””Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives,” she said, referring to the hit television show, a national singing competition.

“Goodbye America ... you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it,” she concluded.—AFP