Playing the 'Traitor' Card

In the last week Moveon.org has made the reich-wing of the Republican Party practically apoplectic with outrage that they would intimate "betrayal" on the part of General Patreaus.

In response to these attacks most Democratic leaders did what they seem to be best in response to the GOP and backed away from these comments so rapidly they practically left behind skid marks. Most that is, except for Hillary Clinton, who choose not to distance herself from Moveon, and instead dramatically said nothing. In turn this prompted a scathing attack from Rudy Giuliani which alleged that Hillary's non-Democratic non-Reaction was somehow an endorsement of attacking our troops.

Yesterday, Moveon decided it wasn't going to wait for any prominent Democrat to come their rescue (Snort). They punched back on their own - hard - with a new ad called "Betrayal of Trust".

The Giuiliani ad dares to point out that when Rudy had a chance to do something about Iraq and Al Qeada by being a part of the Iraq Survey Group he skipped out on the meetings to go make Millions at lucrative speaking engagements.

Hm - Patriotism and Service or Cold Hard Cash, which would a traitor choose?

Rudy's clear problem with this ad is the fact that it's absolutely true as opposed to repeated claims by Conservatives of Democratic and Liberal cowardice and betrayal - which aren't.

Not long ago in debate with Cheney Biographer Stephan Haynes John Stewart stated that those who oppose the war aren't calling the warmongers "traitors".

STEWART: No. They keep saying we don't understand the nature of this war. And critics keep saying, we understand the nature of it. You've been doing it wrong.

HAYES: Right, so why is that -- what's the, what's the quality of difference there?

STEWART: Well, no the, the difference there is, we're not calling them traitors.

With these new ads MoveOn.org seems to have now irrevocably changed that fact. NOW we're calling them "Traitors".

Amazingly Haynes denied that the administration and it's supports have regularly engaged in this type of character assassination against Democrats for years. At the time of his statement I myself compiled this list of examples.

First from Administration Supporters.

• Ann Coulter : Barack Obama's Lead in the Polls is "Good for Al-Qeada"
• Townhall : Liberals hate fellow Americans more than terrorists.
• Fox News: Let's find the Happy Insurgents now that Democrats have taken over Congress.
• Bill Kristol : Obama's anti-war stance shows that he would have been pro-slavery.
• Right-Wing Radio Pundit Buzz Patterson : "Democrat politicians, big media, academia, popular culture, and nongovernmental organizations" of forming "a Fifth Column" that is "facilitating defeat against Islamo-fascism" and that Most Liberals are Traitors.
• Radio Host Mike Gallagher on Fox News: the U.S. government should "round up" actor Matt Damon, "The View" host Joy Behar, and MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann and "put them in a detention camp until this war is over because they’re a bunch of traitors."
• Fox News Host : Wall Street Won’t Let A ‘Puny Little Traitor (who leaked the NSA Story)...Take Down Our Market’
• Bill O'Reilly on Cindy Sheehan : I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this [publicity] and also for the responsibility for the other American families who lost sons and daughters in Iraq who feel this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.
• Tom Delay : Pelosi and Reid are getting "very, very close to treason" by opposing the Iraq war.
• Neil Cavuto : "Did Americans who took Hugo Chavez’s oil today commit treason?"
• Melanie Morgan : New York Times editor Bill Keller is guilty of treason and that "Keller and his associates" should be thrown "in prison for 20 years.
• Michael Reagan : Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason."
• Coulter : It is simply a fact that Democrats like Murtha are encouraging the Iraqi insurgents when they say the war is going badly and it’s time to bring the troops home... They fill the airwaves with treason...These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.
• Dennis Hastert : liberals want to take "the 130 most treacherous people, probably in the world...and release them out in the public eventually."
• CNN host Chuck Roberts: Ned Lamont is the Al Qeada Candidate.
• Cal Thomas : The Taliban wing of the Democratic Party cannot countenance any "heretics" who do not toe their line.
• South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson : "Which one of the Democrat [sic] contenders are going to take [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] to task about giving aid and comfort to the enemies by claiming the global war on terror is lost?"
• Dean Esmay on New York Times reporters: "Exposing such a secret program is not whistle-blowing -- it is high treason. When I say 'treason' I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the [sic] are dead, dead, dead."
• Michael Savage : former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright "should be tried for treason, and when she is found guilty, she should be hung."
• Coulter on the Hamdan Decision : [Y]ou just expect Democrats to side with Al Qaeda." Coulter also stated that she couldn't "imagine that this country could have won World War II if this is the way one of the parties was behaving."
• Rush Limbaugh : "Did (Joe) Wilson lie about Niger? Did Wilson commit treason?"

And then members of the Administration itself (who've been less direct but have still made the same point).

• Donald Rumsfeld : War Critics are like Hitler Appeasers
• George Bush : "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses."
• Dick Cheney : "It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again,"
• George Bush : "I asked Congress to give me the flexibility necessary to be able to deal with the true threats of the 21st century by being able to move the right people to the right place at the right time so we can better assure America we're doing everything possible. The House responded, but the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people." [Bush remarks in Trenton, New Jersey, 9/23/02, emphasis added]
• John Ashcroft : "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends." [Washington Post, 12/7/01;]
• Karl Rove : "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

This past Sunday on Meet the Press John McCain made the following accusation against Democrats.

McCain .I hope that we will have the patience and the understanding on the part of the American people that they’ve made great sacrifice and all of us are saddened by it. But I hope we can also point out the consequences of failure, which is what the Democrats are proposing now.

Fortunately John Kerry was sitting beside him and (having learned from bitter previous experience) refused to take that accusation lying down.

SEN. KERRY: Listen to that. You just said the Democrats are proposing failure. We’ve had...

SEN. McCAIN: Yeah. (Unintelligible)...failure.

SEN. KERRY: ...four and a half years of failure. The Republicans stood up and cheered for Rumsfeld, who had a policy of not enough troops. To his credit, John at least said he needs more troops. But the fact is they’ve supported every step of this president, misleading America about the course of this war. Last January the president stood up to Americans. You know what he said, Tim? He said, "We will hold them accountable to their benchmarks." They’re not holding them accountable. They have no means of holding them accountable because they’ve said we’re going to stay there with 130,000 troops into next summer. They have no leverage.

We are not proposing failure, as John loves to assert and Republicans loves to assert. We are proposing a way to strengthen America in the region. We’re proposing a way to, in fact, make Iraq successful to the degree that it can be by playing to the real undercurrents of their, of their cultural and historical divisions. Nothing in the surge addresses the question of Shia, Sunni divide. Nothing in the surge is going to resolve the fundamental reluctance of Iraqi politicians to make a decision, Tim.

Now, we’re not talking about abandoning the place. Why do the Republicans have a complete inability to envision a foreign policy, as we used to have, Republican and Democrat alike, which plays to our strengths and builds alliances with other countries? Bring the United Nations back in. Bring the neighbors into this. Have a standing summit in a standing conference where we resolve these differences as best as can be. The United States can’t do it alone. And we have to change the equation so we regain leverage and initiative. That’s not walking away, that’s walking forward and putting us in a stronger posture.

The Truth, which Kerry put so well, is that Democrats have been the ones standing up and pointing out Bush and the Republicans repeated failure, after failure after failure - and as a reward they've been repeatedly attacked as traitors, appeasers, cowards, cut-and-runners and surrender-monkeys.

Frankly hurting the troops delicate little feelings (with the truth, ugly though it may be), as if they were Tinkerbell in desperate need of applause - does not make anyone a "traitor".

The truth is that Bush and his supporters are the traitors, and it's well past time we began saying so regularly as MOveon.org has finally started to do.

Anyone who...

• Willfully ignored warning after warning (from Richard Clarke, George Tenet to Condi, August 6th PDB, George Tenet in Crawford, 52 FAA hijack alerts) that the U.S. was under threat of imminent terrorist attack in 2001 - is a traitor.
• Failed to respond to the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole once al Qeada was confirmed at the culprit - is a traitor.
• Falsified intelligence information (Niger Forgeries, Yellowcake, Curveball, al-Libi, Aluminum tubes, mobile labs) to support starting a war on false pretenses, is a traitor
• Blew the cover of a covert CIA operative for political gain, is a traitor.
• Engages in Torture in direct violation of U.S. and international Law - is a traitor.
• Spied on the American Public without a warrant in violation of the Law and the Constitution - is a Traitor.
• Failed to ensure that our troops have adequate training and oversight (abu Grhaib), bullets, (not so hillbilly) armor, vehicles, helmets, clean water (KBR), health care (Walter reed) and treatment for PTSD, depression and suicide is a traitor.
• Ignores a drowning American City for nearly a week and lets it SINK INTO OBLIVION then leaves it that way for two years (and counting) while letting the rest of our infrastructure slowly crumble into dust - is a traitor.
• Failed to protect our national interests by engaging in diplomacy, even with our so-called enemies (as every previous administration has done) is a traitor
• Failed to even try to kill or capture Bil Laden because we are an "ally" of Pakistan which has a non-aggression treaty with the Taliban and has merged with Al Qeada - is a traitor!
• Tries to use the American Justice System to FIX ELECTIONS - is a traitor.
• Violates National Security Rules and Guidelines by pretending to be in some mysterious Fourth Branch Of Government - is a Traitor.
• Has Falsified and distorted current intelligence on the ground in Iraq, ignoring the GAO, the NIE, troops in the 82nd Airborne and 71% of the Iraq Public to proclaim that the "Surge is a Success" simply to keep our troops in harms way for political reasons - no matter how many ribbons are on his chest - IS A TRAITOR!

All of these people have betrayed their oath of office to uphold the Constitution and abide by the laws of this nation, all of these people have repeatedly abused and betrayed the trust of the American public time and time again.

But guess what? Most of those people Aren't Democrats!.

We've all been well aware of this for years now, it's well past time we weren't afraid to say so out loud.

I understand why prominent Democrats back away from such language, so do prominent Republicans (in public). They openly use Coulter-geist and Limp-baugh as the mouth pieces for their dirty work while trying to keep their own hands "clean". But it's also clear that they're working in concert - tag team style - Good GOPer/Bad GOPer.

It high time that we learned and began to employ that trick. We are the solders, the grunts, we make sure the dirty jobs get done. Sure Pelosi might not use the same fiery language we do - but that doesn't mean she isn't on the same team.

Fact is: A Spade is a spade and a Traitor is a Traitor. Say it Loud. Say it Proud.

Vyan