MAYDAY! Ads Bombarding Us Promoting Surge. We Need a Response!

If you live here in Florida, Georgia, or four other Southern swing states that Bush won in 2004 by a slim margin, then you have been subjected to a high volume of ads put together by Ari Fleicher's new political action group called Freedeom's Watch. They are running HIGHLY DECEPTIVE ADS with a $15 million budget to run through the next five weeks promoting the surge in an effort to retain support among GOP fence-sitters in Congress as they brace for the Petraeus report.

(As Fleicher put it: "The cavalry is on it's way!")

The ads, if you haven't seen them, are disgusting. They exploit soldiers and 9/11 families. As usual, they blur the line between terror and Saddam; and say with certainty that leaving Iraq will lead to more 9/11s:

The veteran ads show images of 9/11 while saying things like "they ATTACKED us!!" and accusing those who support turning security back over to the Iraqis as "wanting to surrender". (The fact that the NIE claimed that Iraq has made us LESS safe, diverted our attention from the real attackers, and HELPED Al Qaeda grow unimpeded is lost on the speakers).

Both 9/11 spokespeople use the same line: "if they switch their votes for political purposes" it will be "unthinkable" and will definitely lead to "more attacks" in the US. (NOTE TO SELF: Tell family members that if I die, and you want to reduce my death for a political talking point, AT LEAST don't make it a talking point that is widely discredited.)

The tag line at the end claims "victory in Iraq" as the only option, Chris Durang, writing about these ads in the Huffington Post, put it best:

What the f--- is victory in Iraq? We pour in hundreds of thousands of soldiers to physically seek out and kill every single insurgent there? (With new ones created every day.) And then we say to the Sunnis and Shiites, even though you have centuries of hatred between you and even though you have bloodlust revenge in your hearts based on those centuries, we want you to "bury the hatchet" and live in peace together. Uh huh.

The problem is we are being drowned by this propoganda. With the wind at our sails, and the fact that we are right, I find it hard to believe that we can't have a political activist group help COUNTER these vicious untruths. The only counter I found was on MoveOn.org, and that was an ad specifically targeted at Rep. Baird. (Although the message at the end could be modified to others.)

1. If you get a chance, please donate.
2. DEFINETLY call your Congressman 1-877-222-8001 (to be patched through) or write a letter telling them to bring our troops home!

If anyone else has ideas or knows of an organization that can counter this onslaught, please let me know.

It is not enough to be right and to have the facts on your side. That is why Propaganda works--(see election 2004 for reference). Bush and his cronies are repeating a mantra of "victory in Iraq" at all cost--and never even have to define victory. Instead of admitting this was all a mistake and getting our troops out of there, they cynically have decided that all they have to do is convince a certain number of people that victory is "imminent"--or would have been if those damn Democrats hadn't started with an exit strategy. (The exit strategy WILL have to come from Dems, because the GOP will keep us there indefinitely repeating the mantra...)

Unfortunately, this has to mean cutting the funding. This is the ONLY power the Congress has. And many Dems in Congress, including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, seem to be vulnerable to the perception that they are defeatists. This is why this madness has to be countered and countered strongly.

SOMEONE has to look out for the troops...