The Power Of One MoveOn Ad

Today, the Dave Congalton program (920 AM) is scheduled to interview me about MoveOn. I will freely say that I'm a member of this 3+ million member, grassroots group. I'll tell Dave what I know of the organization and how it operates. Guess it's time the so-called Main Stream Media (tm) deal with actual facts for a change.

Here is the text of the MoveOn newspaper advertisement as published in the New York Times, September 10th.

General Petraeus or General Betray Us?

Cooking the Books for the White House

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was "tangible progress" in Iraq and that "Iraqi leaders are stepping forward." And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq, said, "We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress."

Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That's because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don't count. The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you're shot in the back of the head--not the front. According to the Associated Press, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we've been there. We'll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won't hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed.

Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war. We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops. But we won't hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years.

Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.

Amazing how one newspaper ad can cause the US Senate to spring into action. Did they set a troop withdrawal date? Oh no. Our own California Senator, Dianne Feinstein, plus Senator Hillary Clinton and others voted to condemn the ad from the grass-roots organization, MoveOn. Time spent to memorialize their opinion instead of doing something substantial about the Iraq mess.

Telling the truth hurts. In a newspaper ad, in a Senate roll call vote and when that dark telegram arrives with the news of another young soldier killed in action.

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Net sources for the facts:
MoveOn history and activities (Wikipedia.org)
MoveOn's Comment on Petraeus Ad
News reports citing facts stated in the Ad

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