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The Propaganda War on Iraq Is Over


A friend of mine recently said, "The propaganda war is over." This fella is a former wrestler and logger from the real Northwest and is a red-meat conservative. He refers, of course, to the situation in this country regarding the situation in Iraq.

I would take it a step further. While the influence of political propaganda ebbs and flows, the left is currently eating the right’s lunch on any propaganda front you could name.

Ann Coulter made a similar point recently in decrying the lack of any real support from the right for Lewis Libby as he’s pursued on a tangential charge (perjury) from an investigation of a crime that wasn’t able to be prosecuted. (Sound familiar?)


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When William M. Arkin, an NBC military analyst who also writes on national and homeland security for the Washington Post, feels comfortable enough in the Post to assess our troops as "mercenary" and their circumstances as too cushy, you know the pendulum has swung far.

But Arkin’s only saying out loud what the left believes, particularly the media left. And the propaganda from the left has been unrelenting long before Arkin. As hard as it is to imagine, you’ll still hear some media elites tut-tutting about Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. As if these anecdotes are more than news stories.


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Abu Ghraib was news, but not more than 50 front page New York Times stories-worth. Whether the war was Roosevelt’s, LBJ’s or Bush’s, the military is going to misbehave because that’s the nature of war. So if you’ve got Abu Ghraib or Haditha misbehavior, let’s identify the perpetrators and prosecute them. But if you are political, there’s hay to be made by swinging that club ’til you can’t swing it any more, regardless of the harm it does to the military and their cause.

And the mainstream media, from NBC analysts to The Lakeville Journal op-ed page, is political. And distressingly one-note, at that. Yes, after four years of nit-picking and leading with bleeding, the propaganda war on Iraq has been lost and the news media can be proud to have flogged the Iraq thing to a miserable death. Fortunately for them, shame is passé.


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Let me point out an important difference between the left and right. If Lewis Libby lied to the FBI, then let it be proved, or not, in court and let the chips fall where they may. There’s no need for a massive PR front to discredit the special prosecutor and whirl like dervishes to try to change the subject. From here, it looks like perjury.

Nixon was the same story. By the way, today Nixon would truly be classified a RINO (Republican In Name Only).

Exactly why he was so hated is beyond me. He played ball with liberals all the time. But then, these were the same folks who hated Reagan. Nixon tried to resolve a war started by the other team, but got crucified with it. And he committed a crime. So he was told to leave by his friends from the right. And he took his lumps (as did his party) like a man.

 

Peter Chiesa is a working stiff living in Kent, who used to be a red-meat conservative.


 

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