We’ve used this space before to note P-I columnist Robert Jamieson’s evolving positions on certain matters.

Today brings another interesting example. Earlier this summer Jamieson attacked Cindy Sheehan as an insincere opportunist who was doing something “unfathomable” by making her private grief public. Then last weekend Jamieson decided to attend the anti-war march in Seattle, and today he’s crediting Sheehan in print with having ignited a “wildfire” that has energized the anti-war movement (he’s also now quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “A Time To Break The Silence” speech from 1967).

Jamieson, August 13, 2005:

Trouble is Sheehan is not sincerely interested in meeting Bush for a private, heartfelt chat about her understandable anguish and lingering questions.

She wants to make a public splash by allowing critics of the unjustified war in Iraq to use her as a human bazooka against Bush, who got us into this war mess.

That Sheehan would allow her private grief to be plied for a public stunt seems unfathomable… Sheehan’s Texas tantrum wittingly or unwittingly abets left-leaning forces that are happy to use her to get at the president. If the anemic antiwar movement needs a mourning mom to lead the charge against this unjust war, then the movement is in dire straits.

Jamieson today:

A war is going on, though you wouldn’t know it watching people dash to sports events, happy hours and outdoor decks to soak up fleeting remnants of the summer sun.

An anti-war movement also is going on, though again you might not notice it by reading local news. Several thousand people crowded into Westlake Center on Saturday to protest the war, but the gathering got only a few blurbs deep in the news pages the next day.

I felt compelled to go to the public event — as a reminder.

In a country preoccupied by “Desperate Housewives,” baseball pennant fever and the political fallout of killer hurricanes, American men and women are still risking and losing their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Walking through the Seattle crowd also offered a rebuke to what I wrote this summer — about the anti-war movement being misguided as a result of Cindy Sheehan, the mom who tried to shame the president over the death of her soldier son in Iraq.

It took time, but if the vocal yet peaceful Seattle demonstration was any indication, the anti-war movement is starting to harness the wildfires ignited by Sheehan.