Due to a special request, I shall now give my rant on how AWESOME Gaara (not Sandy!) is:
Let's start from the begining. Gaara was was son of the Kazakage, leader of the sand village, and a young woman. He was posessed by the demon within him at birth and killed his mother. Her spirit and the demon is what keeps the sand shield always around him. Everyone in his village knew about his secret and disliked him, much like Naruto. He didn't have much control of his powers when he was young and scared many of the kids away because he would accidentally hurt them when they wouldn't play with him. He was so cute and sad, until his mother's sister, who took care of him, told him she really cared about him. He knew sympathy for the first time. Later that night, she tried to kill him. He killed her in protection, but not before feeling deeply betrayed by not only her, but his father who had sent her to kill him. He is used merely as a tool for the sand village, though he doesn't normally obey orders well, nor gets along with his teamates, who dislike him as well.
Aside from his backstory, he is a very powerful ninja. He could probably hold his own against the legendary ninjas and Naruto. His demon, the sand badger, though kinda funny, is very powerful and almost as large as the demon fox in Naruto. The black around Gaara's eyes is not eyeliner, it's there because he barely sleeps. When he does sleep, the demon posesses him completly and becomes even more terrifying than it originally is. He's got two sand shields, the constantly moving one and the sand armor. He also has a series of impenitrable sand defenses you see later in the series. Not to mention he can rip sand right out of the ground in about a half mile radius around him and use it to smash you to microscopic pieces, trap you, crush you, or bury you many meters below the surface. If that isn't cool, I don't know what is.
So there's my rant on Gaara. If I remember anything else, I'll be sure to update it.
All fear my throwing sandals +10 :)