Juxtaposition

4:10 a.m. I’m enjoying the pallet party with the U.S. senators.

Hillary Clinton (D-New York) has the floor. She and Sen. Olympia Snow (R-Maine) and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-California) have made such calm and reasoned arguments in behalf of the Levin-Reed Amendment, it’s difficult to understand that some just don’t get it.

The Amendment follows the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group and requires a reduction of U.S. troop presence in Iraq beginning 120 days after its passage.

Hasn’t got a prayer. First, it won’t get the 60 votes required to bring it to a vote, then Bush will veto it.

I feel very much a part of the process, though, having a front-row seat to the debate. I don’t have to depend on the morning’s soundbites.

There’s a lot on my mind as I listen now to Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) arguing that al Qaeda is going to take over the Middle East if we leave Iraq, that the result for the Iraqi people will be “horrendous.” For my money, it’s pretty horrendous for Iraqis and our troops now.

Today I got one of those emails passed around the world via the Internet, this one allegedly from an American sergeant, Eddie Jeffers, in Iraq. Apparently his letter to his father has made him the darling of right-wing Web sites: LINK

Some of his points:

* Demorats and liberals who oppose the war in Iraq are “anti-American” and do not support our troops.
* “I will watch the television and watch the Cindy Sheehans, and the Al Frankens, and the rest of the ignorant sheep of America spout off their mouths about a subject they know nothing about.” (Sheehan lost her son there and Franken has made many USO tours there to entertain our troops. They are hardly “ignorant sheep.”)
* Americans who denounce the war policy “are becoming our enemy.”
* He claims American soldiers kill Iraqis “in the midst of battle, and they are investigated and sometimes thrown in jail – for doing their job.” (This is not true. The killings investigated were not in the midst of battle; they are killings of innocent Iraqi civilians, the very people he claims to be fighting for and helping.)
* He singles out CNN, MSNBC and CBS viewers as being “obsessed with bad news.” (No mention, of course, of Fox News.)
* “(P)eople will not let up their hatred of President Bush. They will ignore the good news, because it just might show people that Bush was right.”
* He claims to be fighting “terrorists” to preserve our freedoms, at the same time making a mockery of these freedoms.

If this young sergeant is for real, no one wants him dead. We want him home.

Interesting juxtaposition while listening to the senators debate this same issue.

My friend Clara and I discussed the circulated email and one she had just received. Hers bore the title "Can a good Muslim be a good American?" “Then,” Clara writes, “it goes off on all this BS that's supposed to be in the Koran and how Barack Obama is a ‘radical Islamist’ who wants to be our president.” Clara is right to assume that most recipients haven’t read the Koran.

When there is a world of legitimate news at our fingertips, why do people continue to pass this vicious tripe around? Nine times out of 10 a search of Snopes.com reveals these emails are propaganda hoaxes.

They rarely carry sources or attribution.

The people who pass them around have been told by right-wing news outlets and pundits that Americans are their enemy, that the most trusted news sources are not to be trusted.

And, I’m certain these senators, debating through the night, attempting to remove our troops from harm’s way, from the midst of an unwinnable civil war, are “anti-American” and “the enemy.”

With all this on my mind, I cannot shake the image of Dick Cheney, just two months before the 2006 elections, telling NBC’s Tim Russert, “We've got almost 300,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped in the security forces.” (whitehouse.gov)

When you cannot tell the American people what is really going on, when they won’t find out for themselves, try a little fearmongering, a little hatemongering – works every time.