A few days ago,
I highlighted a media campaign being orchestrated by Progress for America, a pro-Bush propaganda arm of the White House. It involved putting out TV ads featuring Iraq war veterans spinning out pro-Administration propganda on the war.
It appears that post (I think) had an impact. There was a very concerted counter-attack on that ad, which was run during the opening of the Olympic Games on a local NBC afiliate in Minnesota. Many viewers of the ad were none to pleased with it, and voiced their displeasure.
In fact, the outcry was so great, the station actually wrote a story about it on their website. And wound up issuing a disclaimer, stating:
The station neither agrees nor disagrees with the messages in advertising, but one of our responsibilities is to be an advocate for freedom of expression and to provide a marketplace of ideas.
Not only that, one of the "fighting Dems" attacked the ad as well. According to the article above, Andrew Borene, an Iraq war veteran of the Marine Corps himself, and who's now running for state senate as a Democrat, said: "good Americans can say things that aren't true," and the ad does not match what he called "objective reality." [Here is Borene's full press release criticizing the ad in pdf format]
But that's not all! (I sound like
Ron Popeil, don't I?)
Minneapolis Star Tribune Columnist, Nick Coleman, also heavily criticized the ad. A rebuke so thorough and effective, that Powerline's own Assrocket was forced to post a rebuttal.
Assrocket also notices that none other than Paul Rieckhoff (who I suggested go after these guys) did, in fact, respond to the ad as well! Here's the excerpt form Coleman's column that drove Assrocket over the edge:
"This is a political organization that is using troops for a political agenda," says Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). "These ads are trying to prop up the president's flagging agenda. That seems like a cheap trick. It's the same kind of thing he does when he keeps goes around giving speeches in front of the troops."
[...]
To Rieckhoff, a combat platoon leader in Iraq, these ads do not speak the soldiers' truth.
"The troops do not overwhelmingly support the president in Iraq," says Rieckhoff, who notes that polls show the troops' approval sinking to the low 50 percent range. "And the CIA said there is no link between 9/11 and Iraq. They still say that. So this ad is simply not true."
Assrocket makes a big deal out of the fact that Rieckhoff once delivered the Democratic respons eto President Bush's radio address.
But, being Assrocket, he couldn't help himself but totally destroy his credibility by citing a letter to the Star Tribune by a veteran named "Joe Repya" in response to Coleman and Reickhoff.
Assrocket never mentions that Repya is a full-fledged Bush operative. (A fact I once highlighted on my blog. But, alas, I can't find the archived post oon the Wayback machine).
But, a quick Google search reveals the truth about Repya. He's a partisan hack. In fact, he was the CO-CHAIR of the Bush/Cheney Minnesota Veterans Committee in 2004! A fact that Assrocket, naturally, neglects to mention. Assrocket, of course, is deliberately withholding that piece of information from his readers. I know this because Assriocket, in a 2004 post, acknowledged that Repya worked for the Bush/Cheney campaign.
But, of course, Repya didn't mention his high-level political affiliation with Bush/Cheney '04 either when he wrote his letter to the Star Tribune complaining about RIECKHOFF's partisanship!
I suggest e-mailing this information to Nick Coleman, so he can expose Col. Repya for the partisan hack reprobate that he is, and to force the editors of the Star Tribune's Letters page to identify Repya as the 2004 Bush/Cheney Veterans Committee Co-Chairman the next time he writes in.
Here is Coleman's e-mail address: ncoleman@startribune.com.
Please post any responses you get in the comment section of this post.
Finally, special thanks are reserved for all the Kossacks who recommended my previous post, and brought this information a wider audience. I hope you will do so again, and keep up the pressure on these lying clowns.
[Updated for clarity, to add a hyperlink, and to correct Joe Repya's Bush/Cheney 2004 campaugn affiliation]
UPDATE: Tooblue
has more information on this ad. And notes that it has been running repeatedly on a local CBS affiliate as well. He has some action he'd lik you all to take to combat it.
ANOTHER UPDATE:
Joe (non partisan) Repya also gave a stemwinging, Zell-Miller-eque speech at the Republican National Convention