Political Ads

There are two political ads showing up on the cable channels recently. One has a woman claiming to be the mother of a soldier serving in Iraq and the other is supposed to be a soldier serving over there. The gist of their comments is that the current "surge" is working, showing amazing progress, and laying a path for the end of the war, and more or less imploring people to be more patient and that things are working out. More or less same stuff different day.

But then the tone changes, and they each begin explaining that the reason we have to stay in Iraq has to do with 9/11 and they try very hard to say without every saying it that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11.

This is a very old administration tactic that has been repeated continually even while those saying it are confirming that they know this is a lie. The Bush administration wants very much for us to tie the 9/11 attacks to Iraq so they have some justification for their continuing this war. It's unfortunate for them that it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt by anyone including Mr. Bush that this simply is not the case. So while they cannot make the claim directly, they can make it indirectly by talking about the two events in the same context without ever saying that they are related. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney do this constantly.

So what has this to do with these ads? I wanted to know the same thing. There is a new website out there called politFact which resides at politfact.com; I went there and posed the question to their people, describing these ads and asking who was behind them. That was this morning. This afternoon I heard from the Washington Bureau Chief for the St. Petersburg Times. He said he had heard that these ads were going to be coming out, but didn't know that they had hit the air. The person behind them is Ari Fleischer, Mr. Bush's former press secretary. By extension that means at least that the Republican National Committee has its mark on them somewhere.

The guy from the site is now checking this out to find copies of the ads and to determine exactly who is doing what. I kind of like that. While my part in exposing this is teensy, it allows me a temporary illusion of being a politico or perhaps a mini-reporter. Talk about fulfilling a dream. *big ol' grin*