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

[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.

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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.