"Watch it now on GOP.com"

"It's time to set the record straight about Iraq. That's why we've released this new web video, "Democrats: Dishonest on Iraq." Watch it now on GOP.com.

Watch, and you'll see Senator Hillary Clinton talking tough when it came time to confront Saddam, saying "I can support the President, I can support an action against Saddam Hussein because I think it's in the long-term interests of our national security ..." Or Howard Dean calling Iraq an "international outlaw." Or House minority leader Nancy Pelosi stating unequivocally, "Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There's no question about that."

Watch Democrat after Democrat on tape, reaching the same conclusion the President reached about Iraq.

Now that the politics have changed, those Democrats are trying to rewrite history. We welcome a robust debate about the conduct of the war. But for these Democrats to make politics their bottom line, abandoning their long-held positions when times get tough, sends the wrong message to the Iraqi people and to the terrorists. Whatever the politics in Washington, our troops need to know that our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will defeat this enemy.

Be a part of setting the record straight by watching the video on GOP.com, and sending it to your friends and family. You are where this Democrat dishonesty ends.

Sincerely,

Ken Mehlman
Chairman, Republican National Committee"

This came in E-mail.  You Democrats are not going to like this, but it reminds me mightily of the baloney that LBJ fed us all long ago.  There is the same detachment from reality, the same willingness to bend the truth, the same willingness to cast aspersions on the motives of fellow citizens who do not agree with your policy.

This also reminds of the brainless repetitive hectoring of "the citizens" in the lamentable film, "Starship Troopers."  In this film, a "federation" government of the future relentlessly indoctrinates, spins, minimizes, entices and lies to obain a willing compliance from the citizenry.

Politicians?

A plague on all their houses.

Pat Lang

Comments

[J]

Colonel,

to watch those (gop lawyers like mehlman) who have never worn the uniform, bantering about our military like it was their own personal cannon fodder to use and abuse, makes a person angry just watching such. stick their candy-rears on the patrol line for a week (most probably couldn't last a day) and watch them sweat.

mehlman is a putrid putz in my personal opinion.

[alice]

This is the same kind of reality distortion we see in Iraq. The Republican problem is not simply the radical Democrats, it is the slowly developed doubts of two thirds of the people, many iof them being people who supported the war and voted for Bush.

Colonel Wilkerson and General Scowcroft, 2 of the most recent questioners are not radical Democrats.

As James Fallows rights these people literally can't see many of the concerns of the people:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20051114/cm_huffpost/010621;_ylt=A86.I1GMynhDWhoBRAn9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--

[Geoff]

off topic -

I read your (and others) letter re. Plame.

It was well done, thank you for participating.

I wonder where Michael Scheuer is in all this. I'd have thought he would contribue. Do you know him? and is he involved in anythin presently?

[stinkeye]

Colonel,

Propaganda is an equal opportunity killer. During Vietnam, Democrats and Republicans, Johnson/Nixon, spewed lies of such enormity that The Wall is the most sobering memorial in Washington.

This administration is so much worse.

Their war was covered in so much Disney dust that the faithful were addicted before they even had a taste. Now that the taste is bitter in the mouth the only place they want to spit it is in the eye of The Other Guy.
`

[Eric]

I think this NYT editorial successfully repudiates many of thesetalking points:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/opinion/15tue1.html?hp

I am not saying however that the spineless Democrats should not have demanded a full war-going debate in 2002.

Different subjects totally.

[Michael Murry]

I of course concur with Pat Lang's comments. In fact, I've simply overloaded him with imponderable poetry on the subject. I've gotten so ticked off at the duplicious, Orwellian bastards that I took two days and wrote "Lunatic Leviathan," to go along with my most recent "Soldier's Soldier" and "Dead Metaphors." I'll send Pat the files.

At bottom here, though, has to come the realization that the famed Nation of Sheep (Lederer) or Fate Driven Herd (Beaudelaire?) -- whatever one wishes to truthfully call us -- has to take its lying government by the throat and throttle it. We've lost more than 50 men (including some women?) already in the first two weeks of this month. When does any of this predictable carnage begin to generate a sense of urgency? When does the Congress of the United States put aside all other less-important business and simply refuse to do one other thing until it has nailed this administration to the wall on "finishing," "completing," "concluding," "getting shut of," "ridding ourselves of," "terminating," "wrapping up," or just plain "ending" this interminable bloodbath? Didn't we already "accomplish" this "mission" -- years ago?

I want to repeat the word "urgency." We don't have all the time in the world to dither. When you send men down the same road, through the same village, over and over again only to have them come back again and again with the bodies and body parts that they once knew as friends, sooner or later the people giving the stupid orders to keep doing that will find themselves sleeping with fragmentary hand grenades. You can only push good men (and women?) so far. I say the despicable pushing of them has got to stop.

The people running this show -- at the highest levels -- never served in war and have no experience of it. We can all see what that lack of personal experience has cost our military and our country. We get nothing from them but abstract, airy metaphors about "oil spots" and "fly paper" and "falling dominoes." I say we've got George Armstrong "take the low ground" Custer running things and the "Indians" can't believe their good fortune.

This war in Iraq doesn't help our country. It buys us nothing (like "fungible" oil, as SecWar Bumsfeld calls it) that we can't purchase on the open market at a cheaper price. It only hurts our military, our own economy, and our own dwindling sense of our own national worth. We need to stop it. Now.

[hk]

Col. Lang, let me note that Starship Troopers was supposed to be a satire, but very few people got the joke.

[RJJ]

when I click on this site I get the following message:

cid:[email protected]

app: cid.

if you were not expecting this code, it may be blah blah malicious code.

blah blah

click cancel to refuse.

anbody else getting this message? anybody know what it means?

[RJJ]

first line of the above message is --

an external application must be launched to handle cid links. requested link:

cid: number string at earthlink.

what the hell?

[ikonoklast]

RJJ -
You can go directly to www.gop.com to access the propaganda. It's front and center on the main page. Keep a barf bag handy.
Did anyone notice the music playing in the backgroud as the Democrats are speaking? "Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" by Traffic. Subtle ... about as subtle as a broken leg.

[alice]

Hillary has consistently supported the war, yet they need to attack her. These people are making it clear that you can't work or compromise with them because if you're not one of them you are the enemy. Moderate Republicans and true conservatives are getting the message.

[Curious]

Hillary is a serious contender IMO. She will say anything to get elected. She is only slightly better than Biden.

the front runner so far still to be feingold.

--------

incidentally. I think matt has a point.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_11_13_atrios_archive.html#113224514546918964

The upcoming Iraq election is indeed the final corner to be turned. As Yglesias says, it is the last chance to pull out on our terms. It's going to be messy no matter what, but it's the final chance to say "mission accomplished! we're out of here."

The alternative is 2-3 troop deaths a day until that point that the people in power decide 2-3 troops deaths per day isn't worth it anymore. Since no one can really define what "it" is, and the president has equated leaving with losing, that day is unlikely to come until we have a new president or a sufficient number of Republicans rebel. Sadly, I don't put much faith in that last possibility. While it's somewhat difficult for pro-war Democrats to change their mind and save face, it's almost impossible for the Republicans who went Full Metal Jingo on this war to do so.

[Curious]

typo: hillary is NOT a serious contender. (she is a rightwing wet dream democrat candidat however. Clinton bashing nostalgia.)

[alice]

I am not concerned with Hillary per se. She has been supportive of the war. In a consensus/compromise system this kind of thng wins you slack. In absolutist ideologies it doesn't. Purity is required.

Even Republicans are rebelling and they are gathering critical mass and courage to defy the slime corp. I think we are seeing the fall of a machine and possibly the tragic decline of an administration into hubris and blindness.

[W. Patrick Lang]

hk

I got the satire. pl

[jonnybutter]

Being a Democrat, I don't mind at all if you (quite fairly) associate LBJ's shameless propaganda in the 60s with the BS this WH is putting out. Unlike many leaders in the current government, I put country ahead of party. Johnson's presidency was 'failed' in the old fashioned sense, ie, it wasn't a total failure, but one failed policy (a big one!) overshadowed the positive achievements. In other words, we used to have a higher standard for 'failure'. Tell me one big thing which this 'administration' has done well, one situation it has ameliorated.

I can't think of one, either.

Johhny

Right. pl

[Michael Murry]

I don't want to get into the "Democrats" too much right now because the party that finally turned on its own President Johnson and then led the cut-off in funding for the American War on Vietnam -- thus ending the interminable Nixon-Kissinger stalling that sent me there -- hasn't rediscovered its working-and-lower-middle-class roots yet. Some signs of recovery do exist, however: like in California where Recall-Republican Governor Schwarzenegger just got hammered by the nurses, cops, firemen, and teachers -- the hard-working, underappreciated people whose kids now spend their days and nights catching bullets and bomb fragments in Deputy Dubya's desert shooting gallery. I think they've had about enough of this Republican "patriotism-lite" bullshit.

The Repugnant Ones, though, do still "run" the government, even though they've chosen to run it off the road and over a cliff. So I'd watch Senator McCain versus Senator Hagel here, since these two Republican Vietnam Veterans have diametrically opposed views on what to do now in Iraq. As I've said before and often, these guys (and John Kerry, too) really let me (and I think the country) down hard when they voted for Bush's Bungle in Baghdad. After living through the whole sorry mess that we did, I wouldn't have thought a troop of uninstructed chimpanzees would gullibly fall for another Gulf of Tonkin stampede, but they did. Senator Hagel, though, to his credit, has seen the truth of it all, remembered his own time as an enlisted grunt in Vietnam, and has called for us to get together and get out of this mess. McCain, though, still lusts after the "commander-in-chief's" pathetic Napolonic baton and doesn't seem to want it to end before he gets his chanced to "do it [Vietnam] right this time." Although I understand and sympathize, I really wish some of my fellow Vietnam Veterans would just get over trying to rationalize and justify the unjustifiable. You can't do a wrong thing the right way. We tried that. It didn't work. It couldn't have. Now we've tried again. Oh, brother.

George W. Bush and Karl Rove did sucker most "Democrats" into giving Bush political cover for his vendetta war agains Saddam "he tried to kill my daddy!" Hussein. Now these dupes have to find a way to just admit: "Hey, the President of the United States demanded that we trust him and support him as loyal citizens. We did. We still believe in the office of the Presidency. We just no longer believe in the man who currently occupies it." Something like that. The "Democrats" have started to peel off and also some fed-up Republicans. Desperate Days at Credibility Gap now loom before an increasingly isolated president. Chuck Hagel will win this one over John McCain -- or he should. If he doesn't, the Republican Party will just blow itself up like the Democrats did under President Johnson. I don't think this idiocy in Iraq has 10 months left in it, let alone 10 years. First man or woman to get out in front of this tide and lead on it wins.

[searp]

I'm a democrat, and I don't like lying by presidents of either party. I like wartime stupidity even less. Don't care for corruption either.

I hope to be around 20 years from now when I can read a nonpartisan comparative analysis of LBJ and GWB. Why do I think I will like the comparison?

I just hope we can recover from the current mess caused by putting a truly stupid man in the White House for 8 years. I do not use the stupid adjective lightly.

[RJJ]

Expletives deleted, MM! The Dems did not get suckered, they capitulated. Most of the opposition to the Texas Mafia and right-wing revolutionaries has come from conservatives, which is why the persistence in referring to these subversives/radicals as conservatives is maddening (n.b. maddening as in confounding/disorienting).

I have a question. According to the NYT, CLUSTERFX-R-US® has come up with a hot new concept -- SECURITY!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/international/middleeast/20military.html

Is this another credulity test?

[margin walker]

Im always amazed at how on-point Starship Troopers was..