MSM Big Lie Number 5: "The Democratic War" or "It is all HILLARY'S FAULT"

[McCamy Taylor]

Flame away. I do not care. But here are the facts.

The MSM is working on a new Big Lie . I heard Tweety repeating it last night. It is called the Democratic War . He said those words in association with Hillary. What he really meant was that the Iraq War is Hillary's War.

Even if Obama is the nominee, the GOP plans to call this War Hillary's War and Pelosi's War and Reid's War, because they have sound bites of a bunch of angry Democrats calling it that and because this is how the Democrats lost in 1968 and 1972----too many of the party base perceived the VietNam War as the Democrats' War and they refused to support the Party's nominee. Even after Nixon lied about having a secret plan to end it in 1968 and even after he escalated it and even after he invaded Laos and Cambodia and caused the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S, soldiers---his CREEPy re-election people, like Pat Buchanan (still working for the GOP at MSNBC) were able to spin it as a Democratic War .

From Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson, writing in September 1972

If the current polls are reliable--and even if the aren't, the sheer size of the margin makes the numbers themselves unimportant--Nixon will be re-elected by a huge majority of Americans who feel that he is not only more honest and trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnan.

That is the power of propaganda. And this time around the Republican Party has the bulk of the corporate media bosses (and a lot of eager to please media employees) on their side.

When Karl Rove unveiled the Democratic War Big Lie last fall, everyone laughed, even the right wing news media. They had to laugh or look like partisan fools.

http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/12/03/karl-rove-blames-the-democrats-for-starting-the-iraq-war/

You gotta hand it to the man. He really has some audacity (and it's not the audacity of hope). On the Charlie Rose show, Karl Rove blamed the Democrats in Congress for rushing us into war with Iraq.

He claims the Bush administration didn't want to have the war authorization vote before the 2002 election because that would make it too political! Have you ever heard anything more comical? Karl Rove was worried the vote might be too political?!

He is basically unveiling the new Republican strategy on the Iraq war going into the 2008 election -- the Democrats made us do it! It's their war; they started it; it's their fault. You have to give him credit, the man is brazen.

snip

But now think about this scenario: Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination and Mike Huckabee wins the Republican nomination -- and he turns the war around on her. He says, "Well, you voted for the war, I didn't."

snip

Plus, Senator Clinton voted for funding the war for nearly five long years with no accountability. So, the Republican nominee can pretend to be against the war and paint the Democrat as the one in favor of the Iraq War. You think they won't do it? Of course, they will.

The Washington Post did an article at the time which pretended to be skeptical, but the paper actually attempted to support Rove's claim:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113002256.html

While some Democrats urged delay, news accounts reported that some party leaders wanted a quick vote to move the issue off the front burner and leave several weeks before the election to focus on pocketbook issues that they felt would be more advantageous. Daschle said Sept. 17 on PBS that he expected a vote "sooner rather than later." Two days later, Bush sent a proposed resolution to Capitol Hill, saying: "We've got to move before the elections."

The WaPo also defused Andrew Card's statements:

After being sent Rove's comments, Card said he did not want to argue with him. He said he recalled much discussion in the White House about whether it was wise to seek a congressional vote before deciding it would demonstrate American unity. But asked if the White House opposed having the vote before the election, he said, "I don't remember that. I don't remember it being done in the context of the election."

It was clear from the WaPo story that the corporate media had gotten on board the Karl Rove scripted Big Lie It's a Democratic War . However, they knew that America would have to be softened up to the idea, with stories like the infamous "Pelosi knew" headline about water boarding that the WaPo ran months later to defuse the harm that the torture tapes story was doing the Bush administration. Make the war and the war crimes a bipartisan issue before the election--that was the plan.

Sadly, Karl Rove has been aided by the left wing. Indeed, the "Democratic War" got its start with the left wing, in articles like this one:

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05242007.html

May 24, 2007
And Now It's a Democratic War
Kerrycrats All!

By DAVE LINDORFF

The defining moment of the disastrous and laughable presidential campaign of John Kerry for president came when he tried to explain his vacillating and spineless position on the Iraq War, saying, of an earlier war funding appropriations bill "I voted for the bill before I voted against it."

That sleazy, two-faced, slippery effort to have it both ways, to give himself the ability to tell some voters he was "supporting the troops" while telling others he was "against the war," sank his candidacy faster than any swiftboat cannonfire could have hoped to.

snip

The Iraq War is now fully a Democratic War. The hand-off is complete, just as the handoff of the Democratic Vietnam War was handed off to Richard Nixon and the Republicans in 1968.

Dave Lindorff is ten years older than me and has been a journalist since the days of Watergate. I am surprised that he does not remember that the Vietnam war was never fully handed off from LBJ to Dick Nixon. I was in middle school and high school during all of this and I remember how the country apportioned blame for Vietnam. How is that Lindorff can not? If the war had ever become fully a Republican War, then the nation would have scoffed at Kissinger's October 1972 truce.


Since last fall, the mainstream media has come a long way. Last night, Tweety felt comfortable proclaiming the war in Iraq a "Democratic War". And I will bet that no one challenged him. Since he was speaking about Hillary, he may not have even gotten any protest mail at MSNBC. Oh yes, the traditional wisdom goes. That Hillary is a hawk. She supported Goldwater. She just loves war. War, war, war. All the time with the war.

Hmm. I'm not sure why she and Bill worked for McGovern's campaign in Texas in 1972. Maybe Big Dog made Hillary the Hawk do it. But she couldn't have meant it. Because we all know that she looooves war.

I am going to do something that no one ever does. I am going to go back to the fall of 2002 and put myself into Senator Hillary Clinton's shoes. Senator Clinton from New York, ground zero for the World Trade Center attacks. Picture the reaction from residents of New York City when the president whom the press is treating like a demigod and his cabinet--including the incorruptible Colin Powell--declare that Saddam is months away from a nuclear bomb.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/09/09/wirq109.xml

But Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, said: "We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon."

She added: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

The corporate media treats this story as gospel truth.

Think about the fear of NYC residents for family and loved ones in Israel, should a massive war that includes nuclear weapons break out in the Middle East. Think of their fear of another attack in New York. Many people in NYC are suffering from post traumatic stress from 9-11. Fear is a constant companion. They crave reassurances that they and their friends and family will be safe. They turn to their elected officials for that reassurance. Sen. Hillary Clinton's job is to keep them safe---and to ease their fears so that they can get on with their lives.

Now try to imagine a Senator from New York State who did not vote yes to authorize the use of force against a tyrant whom the nation was being told had a nuke and was getting ready to use it one year after 9/11. How would her constituents feel? Abandoned? Terrified?

Ok, Obama supporters. Flame away. I know the game of politics. I have been observing and playing it my whole life. However, you might want to plan ahead. Because all of your "Hillary is the cause of the war in Iraq" bs is playing right into Karl Rove's hands. And it does not matter how much you protest It does not! I can tell you with 100% certainty It does too. And your candidate is going to suffer for it in the general election.

Even if the nominees are Obama and the "100 years of war" GOP McCain, the Democratic War strategy still works. When Obama tries to blame McCain, the faux maverick will just snap back "Look here, your party was all for this war. They voted for it. They funded it. The people who are endorsing you are the same ones who backed this war. This is as much a Democratic War as a Republican War. And I have more experience with military matters than you, so I am the one can end it!"

All McCain has to do is add that he and his buddies at the Pentagon have come up with a "sure fire plan to end the war with honor" (one that W. would never listen to, because everyone knows that he does not listen to the general)and McCain will have the election sewn up. Because McCain will have made him out to be a liar, who pretends to be against a war that is really his war---the Democrats' War . And the press will be praising McCain for his "honesty", just as Tweety called McCain "honest" last night for his "100 years of war" remark.

And if given a choice between an "honest" candidate and a "liar", the nation always picks the one that the corporate media has labeled the Truth Teller.

So, enough with giving Karl Rove and the GOP ammunition. I realize that many of the people posting here pretending to be Obama supporters, posting the really nasty splitter stuff are actually Freeper moles playing "Divide and Conquer" games. Obama supporters know that their candidate is the unity candidate. If the post does not sound like it is trying to unite Democrats, then it is probably not coming from a real Obama supporter.

If half the energy that is spent here denouncing good, honest Democrats was spent sending mail and email and making phone calls to MSNBC and CBS and ABC and CNN every time they called Edwards a "phony" or Obama "scary" or Hillary a "bitch" or the war "Democratic", the MSM might start to pay attention to us instead of just doing what they think their corporate bosses want them to do. Reporters and pundits have egos. They want to build up a fan base. They do not want to be perceived of as media whores. And they sure as hell do not want to end up like John Solomon of the Washington Post, who wrote all the of John Edwards hair stories and is now so reviled that the only place he can get a job is the Washington (Mooney) Times.

Even media whores take some pride in their work.

[madfloridian]

1. I am recommending a good post...but with a caveat.

The war is going to be an issue. I think our Democrats need to start addressing it powerfully and strongly, not offering wimpy explanations. John Edwards and John Kerry showed them how, and the others need to follow suit.

They will call it our war, and if our Democrats try hard and put their heads together they can counter that argument.

Good thoughtful post, as usual.

[McCamy Taylor]

11. Best defense---impeach Cheney NOW. Do it for his no-bid Halliburton contracts.

No one in the U.S. will be able to justify those.

The best result will be that Dick Vader decides he does not want to give back his money and go to jail and he agrees to let W. start pulling out troops! Hurray. The war will be over.

The second best result. Cheney is gone. W. picks McCain to be his VP. McCain is tarnished with association with Bush. Bush no longer has Cheney to keep him from pulling out troops. He starts pulling the troops out. Hurray! The war is over.

Third best results. Congressional GOP sticks up for Cheney. Republicans tarnished as the party that approves of corporate crime (and war profiteering) at a time when the economy is going south.

The 25% of Americans who will get mad that Cheney is impeached are the same ones that plan to vote for whatever piece of slime the Republicans nominate.

[Tactical Progressive]

2. Hillary's IWR vote was exactly correct from every angle

Publicans, even with the assistance of the disgusting mainstream media they control, won't be able to paint the Iraq invasion as a Democratic act.

Though I agree with you that they'll both try in whatever ways they can.

[Guaranteed]

4. Riiiight- cuz they weren't able to do that in 2004. nt

[robbedvoter]

3. Don't forget: Rove first wrote this in his "ook" - and everyone laughed

I knew it would be used in the elections.

[UALRBSofL]

6. I have to take exception to this theory

This post almost sounds like a "lets not vote for Clinton because she will lose". Frankly I disagree because I believe she has the ability to overcome any vile accusations that may come her way. And frankly, anything the GOPers throw at her will just roll off her back. She has such a huge base of support that believe she can unite everyone be it democrats. republicans, and, independents that she will be able to overcome them. Now, I am offended that you would suggest any Clinton supporter is a FREEPER. I have been a supporter of the Clinton's from when Bill was attorney general, to governor of arkansas all the way to the white house. This kind of propaganda is not healthy for the party and frankly it insults my intelligence. I'm not changing my vote over a theory that an Obama supporter throws out. I'm sorry but I'm just not buying it.

[robbedvoter]

8. Not a theory - just a prediction of things to come. Sure she can fight it

For one she expects it, she's ready unlike the other guy who thinks that "they really, really like him"

[McCamy Taylor]

10. I thought the Obama supporters would flame me. I defend Hillary. And ask them

to stop throwing her vote at her, as if her vote made a hill of beans difference (it did not).

The Democrats should stand united. This is George W. Bush and the NeoCon's War. Every time anyone on the left tries to call it Hillary's War or Pelosi's War or Reid's War, they call it the Democratic War ---which will make it "Obama's War" this fall.

The people who convinced America that the truth teller Al Gore is a liar and that the populist John Edwards is a fat cat, can easily convince them that peaceful Obama is a warmonger. Look at what a good job they have done of convincing them that the women who wrote "It takes a village" is an uncaring she-demon.

[PurpleChez]

19. I applaud your desire to stand up for Hillary, BUT....

but I'm really uncomfortable with your admonition to "stop throwing her vote at her, as if her vote made a hill of beans difference." Why shouldn't Hillary have to answer for ANY vote, let alone IWR? And since when do we excuse politicians for bad votes based on the notion that their vote didn't make a difference? Should all politicians go with the flow and vote with the majority, rather than voting their consciousness or for what is right? Are we going to make excuses for folks who voted for PATRIOT and the suspension of habeus corpus because those bills were going to pass anyway and one person's oppostion wouldn't have made a difference?

[Demeter]

5. Vietnam Was an Equal Opportunity War

Everybody in a position of political power wanted the glory, everybody feared the defeat. Everybody had to put their 2 cents in, and everybody jumped up and down on the Peace Movement. Peaceniks, they called those visionaries, trying to tar them with the taint of Soviet-style communism.



Well, there was no glory, and the defeat was manifest for years, even before it was official.

And Soviet Communism died of its own economic insupportability. But Castro is still going strong, and Cuba is in better shape than ever. Maybe even better than the US after Bush and Cheney trashed it.

And Iraq is fundamental in that BushCo trashing. End Iraq and Afghanistan, and we might have a chance of recovery. Keep it going, and the US will be a sitting duck for the next act of God that comes along: influenza, inflation, insurrection, or some other In thing.

Vietnam's war criminals never yet paid for their crimes. Most of them are dead now. The rest are in the GOP. Let us not repeat the failures of our fathers and grandfathers. Let's learn from the suffering.

[derby378]

7. Are you kidding me? Tweety IS a Republican

And the Democrats on Capitol Hill had plenty of chances to defund the occupation of Iraq and cut Herr Decider's balls off, this is true.

But let's be very clear about one thing: This is, and always will be, Bush's War. His administration talked Hillary into voting for it. His administration ordered Colin Powell to hawk it at the UN. His administration starting carving the map of Iraq into slices to be allocated to corporate interests.

I have a very big issue with Hillary trusting Bush on Iraq. But it wasn't Hillary who was telling us that Saddam was smuggling yellowcake from Niger or burying Sarin stockpiles in the desert.

[mojowork_n]

9. No flame, not even a stale and crisp meadow muffin.

But in the whole, spectacularly awful iteration of lies and deceptions that were trotted out to 'justify' the Iraq invasion, the "lie" you're referencing was, like, three or four layers back from the first.

That would have been the one about Saddam's 'not allowing inspection' in the first place, or standing in the way of attempts to verify his WMD capability.

The Bush administration didn't believe the negative reports of the WMD inspectors, and was responsible for withdrawing the inspectors from Iraq -- because that wasn't the conclusion they wanted to hear reported.

The Iraqi's responded with a 12,000 page memorandum denying that Saddam had any WMD, and basically asked, 'whatever other questions you may have beyond what we've outlined here', just let us know. They did everything they could, short of dropping their pants and bending over to pick up the soap.

(Shades of Rambouillet, 1999, and the prelude to the Kosovo 'war': http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kosovo-talks.html )

The Niger yellowcake forgeries, the speculation that it was Saddam who was behind the anthrax attacks on Tom Daschle -- all that stuff was just more disinformation, to cover that first, seminal mendacity.

Not being in power, or in charge of the State Department or the Pentagon, clearly, Democrats didn't have much to do with that one.

[McCamy Taylor]

12. Big Lie no. 6 "The Surged Worked" from the Pentagon, already making the rounds

The Pentagon is practically having orgasms at the thought of John McCain as president. After 8 years of Bush-Cheney and eight years before that of conscientious objector Bill Clinton, the Pentagon wants a soldier to be president.

Therefore, you will hear everyone from the highest ranking general down to the lowliest private get on national TV---NBC/GE is the Pentagon's propaganda organ, but the other news networks that want a Republican FCC will repeat the lie, too---claiming The Surge Worked!

This is because McCain supported it.

The corollary will be that seasoned soldier McCain and his buddies in the Pentagon have a secret plan to end the war with honor (straight out of the Nixon play book).

So, be on notice. From now until November, the Pentagon is a Big Fat Liar, too. I hate to say it, because they have done a fine job protecting us from War with Iran. However, they can not foist John McCain off on us. He is bad for this country. He will make sure that we go another 4 years without health care and he will cripple Social Security and do nothing for our economic crisis except help the rich profit from it.

PS It is possible that Disney/ABC will not get on the John McCain bandwagon. There is a lot of bad blood between them over A La Carte cable.

[McCamy Taylor]

13. What bothers me about the Pentagon-GE tie, is what happens when they say "KO" has to go?

We all saw what happened when the Bush administration told Viacom that their star investigative journalist, Dan Rather, the one with the to-die-for 80% recognition rate and 80% favorable rate had to be taken down along with his "60 Minutes" team--or else Viacom would be forced to follow federal media ownership rules which meant divesting some of its TV holdings. Viacom pretended to defend Rather against bogus charges that he knowingly used phony documents, when in fact they crucified him so that he could not hurt W.'s re-election chances and so that he would not be around to investigate the phony election totals in Ohio or Florida.

If the Pentagon tells GE "We do not like the disparaging way that your boy Keith talks about John McCain, and we do not like the way that he debunks the Big Lies that we have so carefully crafted about how the surge has worked and about how this was a Democratic War and about how McCain is going to end this war with honor. If you can not put a rein on him, you need to get rid of him. Or else GE can look elsewhere for business." If GE gets that kind of ultimatum from the Pentagon, what is GE going to tell MSNBC? And what will Abrams tell GE? "We need Olbermann to give the public the impression we are fair and balanced?" "Screw fair and balanced," GE will reply."We have an election to win."

The groundwork is already being laid to attack KO. For months right wing sites that no one would trust to give the time of day have been labeling Keith a racist based on sports banter that goes on during sportscasts. Who cares, right? How about this wretched piece of video propaganda at an "Obama '08" site on a Magnify.Net site (as in the liberal web guru Steve Rosenbaum). The narrator with the Cuban accent (maybe Pat Buchanan kept in touch with Nixon's plumbers) spends ten solid minutes telling other Obama supporters that KO is the "man" and not to trust him.

http://obama08.magnify.net/item/B1FZKVWHD80Z3PP6

Something is being planned. I have a nose for these things. I could smell the plot against Edwards a year ago, and I was right. I worried a lot when no one in Keith's staff bothered to tell him that his scheduled guest Lawrence O'Donnell had made a horse's ass of himself in the Huffington Post with his "Edwards is a Loser" piece. O'Donnell should have told KO himself. The fact that he did not proves that he is no true friend. I can not help worrying that O'Donnell was sent on Countdown with orders to attempt to provoke KO into making disparaging remarks about at least Reagan if not Obama, which Obama supporters or someone claiming to be Obama supporters would then claim to be a "racist" attack on Obama. Think of how that could have been. Plus, the fact that Olbermann's staff did not warn him, means that he needs better staff , people who put their boss and their show before their network.

If anyone who knows Olbermann is reading this, watch his back. If they did it to Dan Rather, they can do it to anyone.

[McCamy Taylor]

24. !!!Today the AP has Maj. Gen Rick Lynch making EXACTLY this kind of statement!

Pure McCain '08 propaganda. More in my next journal that I will start working on right now.

You know all those jokes about how there are too many lawyers?

I think there are too many f-ing journalists selling this nation election propaganda.

[f the letter]

14. In fairness, this is now the democrats' war too :

Our congress did nothing to check the lies they were being sold, when millions and millions of protesters worldwide were trying to peacefully push them into doing that. The democratic congress just laid down and voted with the right wing for every Iraq war vote with very rare exceptions.. no accountability or good attached to funding. And they won't impeach, won't indict, won't even censure a thousand false statements about Iraq or any of the other issues.

This war is on our hands now too, and this well-written article does gloss over that fact.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. Democrats in Congress keeps trying to pass legislation to bring the troops home.

Congressional Republicans and/or Bush keep preventing them from doing it. McCain has never voted for a single resolution to bring relief for the men and women on their third or fourth tour of duty.

Before the Dems got control of Congress, they could not even bring up issues like this.

Recall that up until 2005, the Bush administration had a complete lock down on the news media and anyone who tried to suggest that war was not a good thing was mocked and scorned. W. lost the news media only because he broke a promise to deliver unlimited media mergers and acquisitions--and also because the Pentagon got fed up with the plan to invade Iran and instructed GE and its propaganda organ NBC/MSNBC to begin anti-war coverage.

So, basically in 2005, the Dems finally had a chance to start telling Americans that the war was not a good idea. The DSMs finally started to get covered. The NYTs broke the domestic spying story it had been sitting on for over a year in the winter of 2005. These things gave the Dems some power so that they could finally take back Congress by the slimmest of margins---not veto proof--in late 2006.

Now, they have a Congress in which dumb ass Republicans who would rather shoot themselves in the foot politically than do the right thing if it means letting the Dems "score a victory" (God, how I despise Billy Kristol) block them at every move, knowing that it means the death of countless Iraqis and the deaths of US soldiers, too. Bush-Cheney want an endless US military presence so that the spawn of Standard Oil can exploit Iraq's oil which David Rockefeller believes became his (lets's be truthful, His) when Great Britain passed the baton to the U.S. The oil companies' lackeys, the NeoCons, are willing to see Iranians, Pakistanis and Israelis go up in mushroom clouds if it gets Exxon, Chevron and the rest exclusive rights to middle east oil. There is so much money invested in this venture that they almost talked Bloomberg into running if the GOP made the mistake of nominating Huckabee.

And you have the nerve, the arrogance to call this a Democratic War.

If it were a Democratic War, they would not have had to steal the 2004 election in Ohio. They could have counted upon John Kerry to continue it for them, good soldier that he is. The corporate media would not have had to play What exit polls? revealing their own collusion.

[f the letter]

28. This is not nerve or arrogance :

i remember all the events that you described. But the fact that the conservative republicans started it doesn't mean we haven't perpetuated it. We won't stop funding, won't attach benchmarks, won't talk to Iran and Syria about it, won't prevent it from being run by private companies rather than the armies, won't investigate killings of civilians, won't even impeach over it.. we of the Democratic party don't seem to do anything real. i am tired of it. This is on our hands, and it is up to we the constituents to get our congress' collective ass in gear. Until they do that, i feel as responsible as anybody else. You can ignore the fact that we are letting it happen, but that doesn't mitigate it.

And i don't dispute the election was stolen in 2004, you're absolutely right. But that's unrelated.

[Gman]

21. FUCK that!@ This is NOT the Democrats' war, you idiot

YOu're just exactly the kind of idiot that will be thrown back in our faces in November. You need to know when to STFU.

[f the letter]

26. er.. skillful refutation Gman

Until we stop the war this on our hands as much as anybody else's. Notice that's "we" there. Our congress refuses to stop it.. the problem is not that they don't have the power but that they lack the will or courage or intelligence or something. We continue to allow funding with no indications of progress, continue to toe the line and fight only token battles with the administration, and continue to neglect any actual political solutions in Iraq.

People seriously... more than one-liner responses here

[LordJFT]

15. whose fault is hillary not reading the NIE?

[libbygurl]

17. Yes, we are fighting the wrong enemy here on DU, it seems! Thanks for another...

...refreshing wake-up call, McT! K & R.

[PurpleChez]

18. What's to flame?

The scary thing is, it will work. It might not win them an election this time around, but they will manage to convince many of their 'bots, and with minimal effort. Al Franken so wisely observed that conservatives see the government like a child sees his mama--it cannot make a mistake. And rather than face up to the simple truth that the Bush administration is one of the true low points in all of American history they will swallow without question the idea that Hillary Clinton started the war in Iraq

[Gman]

20. Sound clips of "Democrats"

I hope the far left is real proud of what they've done. They are beyond fucking stupid. Of course, we've known that but now we could all be dragged down into the far left's self hate and misery.

[McCamy Taylor]

22. Some of the "far left" is really just a Republican mole, never forget that.

This is especially true of the anonymous voices at DU, but it can also be the case with "name brand lefties" out in the so called real world. Everyone can be blackmailed, now that the Bush administration has access to all the e-mails, phone calls and faxes that we have made since 2001.

So, some of it isn't clueless lefties. Some of it is right wingers and some of it is lefties under duress. And some of it is lefties who think that they are being clever, cutting a mainstream Democrat in hopes of improving the chances of a more left leaning Democrat (sorry Kucinich supporters, I am talking about you) when the more left leaning candidate never had a chance of winning the election.

My rule of thumb---criticize specific comments, actions, policies in a constructive way (as in "this is what you can do to improve your candidacy ") but never make a blanket generalization about a Democratic candidate who might be the party's nominee, and emphasize the positives of everyone. That is what good Democrats do.

[Cameron27]

23. K&R

[Phred42]

25. The DEM Leadership MUST Counter this!

This is ONE of the significant blind spots in the leadership of the Democratic Party.

Allowing Tweety or any other Reich-Wing Tool to spout lies, distortions and Orwellian crap like this is just STUPID and incompetent.

Allowing this to go unchallenged and not corrected -or better, publicly rammed back down his throat is a betrayal. It was better said like this:

"A time comes when silence is betrayal" - Martin Luther King

The Democratic 'leadership' (Pelosi, Reid, Dean, ......) are all guilty of Betrayal.

[surfermaw]

27. Democrat War easily handled

Republican wrote young Clinton a letter soon after took office ( I mean in weeks) asking him to invade Iraq, I guess they thought the young Arkansas former Governor was stupid, but you and I know he is one of the most intelligent president ever...Clinton kelp Saddam in check by bombing him when he needed. Saddam got rid of any weapons of mass destruction, even the germ warfare given to him by Reagan & Bush. Saddam insistence that he had weapons was intended to bluff Iran. The true fact is the oil industry wanted the Iraqi oil fields, and that is the reason they took with them no bid contractors... Then remind the republicans of the last speech Ike made as he left office, watch defense contractors and there are some oil men in the WEST that we should watch, not exact words o Ike, look up his last speech and read the bottom lines.

[Phred42]

29. Teewty said it on National TV - Where is the reaponse?

Suer it's easy to respond to - But WHERE is the Response?