Frank’s Case Book

“When I hear Bush say, `You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans. It conjures up memories of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (The enemy is listening).’ My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me.” — Wealthy supporter of Left-wing causes George Soros.

“The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for undermining support for our troops…” — former Vice President Al Gore.

Americans are typically a congenitally open, friendly, and hopeful people, and they find mean-spiritedness distasteful and off-putting. Americans prefer happy endings over smug, sophisticated cynicism. Former President Ronald Reagan played to these virtues and easily defeated an incumbent pessimistic president, who looked to future and only saw decline. When President Bill Clinton was mired in the muck surrounding his prevarications under oath, Clinton managed to shoulder the mantle of victim-hood and make his accusers appear vindictive. Vindictiveness appeared to many as even tinier than Clinton’s smallness. This comparison worked to Clinton’s benefit and made it politically impossible to convict Clinton in the Senate.

The Republicans have recently carefully crafted a campaign commercial that plays on the American aversion to excessive partisanship by splicing together vitriolic anti-Bush ads and speeches by Democratic and Left-wing leaders. The commercial can be found at www.georgebush.com.

The campaign ad begins with a title scene: “The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party. The Coalition of the Wild Eyed.” The title scene is followed by the wildest eyed partisan of all, the person with a soul of a vice-president, Al Gore. To a background of hearty cheers, Gore shouts: “How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam’s Hussein’s torture prison.”

The MoveOn organization is a limitless reservoir of anti-Bush hatred and exaggeration. The Bush ad inserts a clip submitted to a MoveOn campaign ad contest. It shows a red stylized image of Adolf Hitler over the words “What were war crimes in 1945…” followed by a similarly stylized image of George Bush, with his hand up vaguely reminiscent of a Nazi salute, and the words, “…is Foreign policy in 2003.” All the time in the background, there is the drum beat of voices shouting “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”

Next the Bush ad sequences through facial close-ups of speakers addressing anti-Bush crowds worked up to a fever pitch:

• Former Democratic presidential candidate Governor Howard Dean barking, “I want my country back.”
• Film maker Michael Moore and chief propagandist for the Left asserting, “We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.”
• Normally, well-mannered Representative Dick Gephardt screaming, “The president is a miserable failure.”

Dipping once again into the infinite well of MoveOn’s anti-Bush venom, the Bush ad splices in another clip submitted to MoveOn. It shows a photographs of Adolf Hitler and George Bush, with the words “God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck at them … and then he instructed me to tike at Saddam, which I did.”

The Bush ad picks up pace as it switches once again to Gore shouting to a frenzied crowd, “He betrayed this country. He played on our fear.”

Finally, we see John Kerry, angrily telling us that “Today George Bush will lay off your camel, tax your shovel, kick your ass, and tell you there is no promised land.”

The ad suddenly switches to soothing piano music and we see a flattering image of George Bush. The ad ends by seizing the moral high ground with the words, “This is not a time for pessimism and rage. It is a time for optimism, steady leadership, and progress.”

This commercial will be studied for some time because it cleverly turns the anti-Bush ads on their heads. The MoveOn ads and the Democratic rhetoric try to portray Bush as an evil and even Hitlerian character. By exhibiting this extreme position to a moderate general audience rather than to true-believers on the Left, the Bush ad makes Kerry supporters appear radical and pushes Kerry’s perceived position further to the Left. Even many who disagree with Bush do not find him evil or malicious. The Bush ad reveals some Kerry supporters to be mean-spirited, angry partisans, characters distinctively offensive to most Americans. That message is obvious.

The incredibly ingenious part of the Bush ad is that the Democratic and Left wing denunciations of Bush have the same cadence and pace as the MoveOn clips of Hitler. The Bush ads reverse the association of Nazis with Bush, making Kerry supporters appear with the same heated oratory, the same wild crowds moved by angry rhetoric, and the same bitter resentment of the Nazis. In a campaign ad jujitsu reverse move, this Bush ad succeeds in using MoveOn ads and the angry rhetoric of the Left against them.

The Bush camp must now be careful. The point has been made. Playing that ad too long could eventually backfire. Republicans do not need to be bringing images of Hitler into people’s living rooms. Now that the stage has been set, all the Bush team needs to do is follow Al Gore around with a film crew.

“The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.” — Mark Twain.

The logical fallacy argumentum ad misercordiam asks us to accept the truth of a proposition out of pity for the sorry state of those making an argument. It is only by evoking such sympathy that mainstream news organizations can hope that we accept conspicuous and persistent inaccuracies in their coverage of the War on Terrorism. Not only have there been minor inconsistencies in coverage, but there have been unrelenting errors that betray a fundamental misunderstanding of President Bush’s case for the War on Terror. It is not just that major new organizations display disagreement with Bush’s position, but they display a depth of misunderstanding so deep that it is doubtfuk that some news organizations can ever emerge. Consider the following fantasies of the Left (oops, of the National Media): The Bush Administration was wrong in arguing that that (1) the threat for Iraq was imminent and (2) that Saddam’s Iraq materially conspired with Al Qaeda to execute the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Well. The Bush Administration did not make those argument and assertions that they did are either incredibly misinformed or are aimed at scorching the Administration in the flames of burning strawmen.

Consider first the issue of whether the Bush Administration argued that Iraqi threat to the United States was “imminent.”

In September 2002, the White House published the National Security Strategy of the United States. The report explicitly recognized that threats facing the US came largely from stateless (though perhaps state-supported) institutions. During the Cold War, no matter how distasteful, we depended upon nuclear deterrence to prevent attacks. The new threat from stateless terrorist can not be dealt with similarly. In the words of the report:

“Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents; whose so-called soldiers seek martyrdom in death and whose most potent protection is statelessness.”In a world where it might be possible for terrorist to acquire weapons that might kill thousands of innocents, waiting until a threat is “imminent” or “immediate” might to be grievously too late. More “anticipatory” action might be required. While some suggest that the preemption doctrine is a new one, it rests on at least a forty-year heritage. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John Kennedy’s Administration argued that the blockade of Cuba — an act of war by any conventional definition — to prevent deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba was justified even if the threat from such missiles was not immediate or imminent. By the time such a threat would become imminent, any action would be too late. The Kennedy Administration argued that self-defense might require military action before hostilities were imminent and exercised the prerogative.

By extension, the National Security Strategy of the United States. report argued that:

“The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction — and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”

Now it is reasonable to either agree or disagree with this doctrine. However, it can not be reasonably asserted that the doctrine suggests need for imminent threats to justify preemptive action. The doctrine was clearly lays out the opposite.

However, that has not stopped presumably responsible media outlets from repeatedly suggesting that the Bush Administration was calling Saddam’s threat imminent. One might expect Liberal PBS commentator Bill Moyers to mistakenly suggest “We were at the mercy of the official view that he was an ‘imminent threat’ without any reliable information to back it up.” Moyers’s has, in recent years, cultivated a fondness for convenient fictions. However, it was a grave error for the New York Times, the self-appointed newspaper of record, to assert that “Nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr. Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world.” It is only slightly less egregious to for the Los Angeles Times to suggest that Bush’s State of the Union address “[promised] new evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime poses an imminent danger to the world.”

What the president actually said in was, “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” No imminence was a suggested or required. [1]

The second issue centers around the claim that the Bush Administration suggested the attacks on September were jointly conducted by Hussein’s regime and Al Qaeda.

A preliminary report by the staff of the September 11 Commission finds no evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda worked jointly to execute the 9/11 attacks. USAToday began their coverage of the report with peculiar assertion, “There is `no credible evidence’ that Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan and train for attacks against the United States, the commission investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks said Wednesday. That finding disputes a rationale the Bush administration gave for invading Iraq.” But that clearly was not was not the rationale. The argument was that given the links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, their joint motivation to attack the US, and Saddam’s refusal to compile with UN resolutions to rid Iraq of WMD, we need to act before any threat became imminent.

The Associated Press covered the Commission Report by with the lead: “Rebuffing Bush administration claims, the independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks said Wednesday no evidence exists that al-Qaeda had strong ties to Saddam Hussein.” Other news reports suggested that the Commission’s report had dismissed the Bush Administration’s assertion that Al Qaeda and Iraq cooperated in the 9/11 attack.

Unfortunately, the differences any subtle difference between the Commission’s Report and Administration statements were exaggerated beyond all reasonable recognition.

Within a couple of days, the Co-Chairmen of the Commission, Democrat Lee Hamilton, grew frustrated with all the miss coverage. Hamilton explained, “…I have trouble understanding all the flak over this…Sharp differences that the press has drawn, that the media have drawn, are not that apparent to me.” Indeed, everyone concedes that there were high-level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the extent and nature of the relationship is difficult to assess. The Clinton Administration was at least as insistent on the operational links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. In their 1998 formal legal indictment against bin Laden, the Clinton Administration cited ties between bin Laden and Iraq. It also used such links as justification for attack on the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan.

For the record, the Administration never claimed that Iraq directly participated in the 9/11 attacks. On September 16, 2001 days after the attack, Vice-President Dick Cheney was asked on by Tim Russert on Meet the Press “Do we have any evidence linking Saddam or Iraqis to this operation.” Cheney’s direction answer was simply, “No.” Bush himself stated last September, “…we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11th.” Perhaps the statements were too nuanced and equivocal for major media outlets to parse.

Parliamentary governments are inherently more provisional than the presidential form under which the United States operates. Temporary changes in political fortunes can force elections, while presidents, save for “high crimes and misdemeanors” are permitted at least four years to attempt to implement their policies. The provisional nature of parliamentary governments is probably the reason that ministerial resignations for failures are more common under parliamentary systems. These resignations are more common even if the responsibility for failure is not directly attributable to a minister. Like the captain in command of ship, what ever happens, the minister takes responsibility.

There is, admittedly, a certain satisfaction and closure in a minister’s resignation. It conveys as sense of accountability, salutary in democratic governments. There is even statistical evidence accumulated by political scientists that suggests that the timely resignation of a minister can cauterize a political wound and even enhance the political fortunes of the minister’s party. Perhaps it is the inveterate American emphasis on individuality that makes it difficult to assign personal blame unless there are personal actions involved. Calls for resignation in the United States do not typically arise from a principled insistence upon absolute accountability, but rather from political oppurtunism. The calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld fall into this latter category.

Many Democrats, who want to maximize the political damage to the Bush Administration, are the same ones who were willing to overlook far more consequential decisions by Democratic cabinet members. Two cases come immediately to mind. In 1992, Attorney General Janet Reno specifically approved the assault on the Branch Davidians cult compound in Waco, Texas. The assault did not go as planned and 75 people died. In 1993, then General Colin Powel asked Secretary of Defense Les Aspin to grant the request of the US commander in Somalia for armored vehicles. Wishing to avoid a heavy presence, Aspin denied the requests. Partially as a consequence of this decision, 18 soldiers were killed in an ambush in Mogadishu.

Neither Reno nor Aspin willed those tragic outcomes. They erred in good faith. However, they were far more directly involved in the decisions that led to the disasters than Rumsfeld is to prisoner abuse, yet few Democrats asked for Reno’s or Aspin’s resignation. Republicans, of course, did, and Democrats reflexively defended Clinton’s cabinet members.

Democrats and Republicans playing political games is expected behavior, but today when the stakes in the War on Terror are so grave, we should expect more. We know that the higher echelons in the military initiated an investigation immediately as information about prisoner abuse worked up the chain of command. Investigations apportion responsibility. However, the anxiousness by some on the Left to bring down Rumsfeld and to indirectly suggest that the US military is engaged in systemic and inherent abuse is unwise and unbecoming.

This is the opportunity, the moment of imperfection, that those who wish ill on the US have waited for. With or without finding WMD, there can be no doubt that Coalition troops liberated Iraqis from a fascist regime. By the conventional measures of availability of food, electricity, water and sewage treatment, and the less conventional measure of freedom, Iraqis, as a whole, are far better off than they were a year ago. Security, of course, remains a primary concern. However, if the ethical distinction between Americans and Saddam’s regime can be blurred, the morality of American actions can be called into question. That is why in the Middle East, there has been far more press coverage of the abuses at Abu Ghraib than of the slashing of the throat of an American civilian by terrorists. The juxtaposition of American abuses coupled with the apology of American leaders stands in stark moral contrast to the actions of terrorists we fight, evil bullies who brag at the opportunity to slit American throats.

No one is suggesting that investigations into prisoner abuse should not proceed with due diligence or that there should be no press coverage. Nonetheless, an excessive and disproportionate focus on the prisoner abuse by the loyal opposition and saturation press coverage does not bring us closer to the truth. Indeed, it can distort truthful context in a way that may endanger American and Iraqi lives. The honest application of justice remains the only way to salvage American honor from the dishonor the Abu Ghraib prison. If the abuse at Abu Ghraib looks so bad, it is because Americans aspire to higher standards.

Dear Abby,Perhaps I am self-delusional, but I judge myself to be a reasonably intelligent and well-informed person. Yet, I am having difficulty resolving seemingly irreconcilable ideas. How could evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) be so compelling before the war, yet one year later after the liberation of Iraq WMD stockpiles have not been found? I am reduced to asking for help from an adice columnist.

It is clear that virtually every intelligence organization in the world prior to the war concluded that the Iraqi regime possessed WMD of one sort or the other. The US did. The British did. The French did. The Germans did. The Russians did. Even the United Nations Security Council collectively concluded that Iraq had not complied with its obligations to rid itself of WMD and related programs. Iraq had even acknowledged possession of significant quantities of anthrax and other agents and could or would never provide proof of their destruction. Moreover, if Saddam would have simply provided evidence that the regime had rid itself of WMD, then he would have had access to billions of dollars of additional oil revenue. If he had demonstrably renounced WMD and consequently allowed the world to withdraw economic sanctions, he could have waited a decent interval and re-started his WMD program. Abby, help me with my dilemma: stockpiles of WMD have not been found, yet if Saddam had no WMD program why did he endure economic sanctions for a decade?

Though post-war inspections teams have found evidence of WMD laboratories and evidence of long range missile systems in violation of the Gulf War cease fire, but they have not yet found anticipated stockpiles of WMD.

Abby, there are some possible explanations. Perhaps with your help the apparent inconsistencies with these explanations can be resolved.

The WMD Were Hidden or Transferred: Given the several month run-up to liberation by Coalition forces, Saddam’s regime certainly had sufficient time to effectively hide his WMD or transfer stockpiles to Syria or elsewhere. It is very easy to hide the small volume required for militarily significant amounts of WMD, so perhaps there are still dangerous stockpiles that have not been located. Saddam’s regime has been known to bury entire planes to keep them from the prying eyes of Western surveillance. Yet, one would imagine that the inspections teams by now would have been able to persuade at least some of Saddam’s weapons experts to indicate where such WMD might be hidden.

The transfer of WMD to Syria is problematic as well. Saddam would not be anxious to supply WMD to Syria and thereby increase the relative power of a neighbor and competitor. Nonetheless, there is precedent for this behavior. Before Gulf War I in 1991, Saddam sent many of his fighter aircraft to Iran, a former mortal enemy, rather than have his entire air force destroyed by the Americans. Not surprisingly, Iran never returned the aircraft.

Iraqi WMD Were Destroyed Long Ago: Is it possible that Saddam long ago destroyed his WMD stockpiles, but was unwilling to admit it for fear that he would be vulnerable to attack from his regional enemies or from the United States? However, this explanation is also unpersuasive. If Saddam was so fearful of his enemies, relying on a deception about possession of WMD would be a precarious arrangement. If these enemies came to realize that Saddam had no WMD, the deterrence and respect they provided would immediately evaporate. Why risk the possibility of enemies discovering that his WMD cupboards were bare? It would be more in Saddam’s self-interest to keep WMD stockpiles while constantly thwarting international inspections in the hope that the international community would weary of the hunt and eventually drop economic sanctions altogether. Then Saddam would have WMD, without the cost of sanctions.

Saddam Was Fooled: A third scenario is that the world’s intelligence agencies were so convinced that Saddam’s regime possessed WMD because Saddam was erroneously convinced he did. Perhaps Saddam’s weapons engineers were truly unable to stockpile WMD under the watchful gaze of weapons inspectors or were too slow in WMD development. Rather than face the anger of a frustrated Saddam, these engineers tricked Saddam into believing that Iraq had WMD. How would Saddam know whether a particular barrel was filled with a chemical agent or with water?

However, this explanation also has its weaknesses. As much as the inability to construct WMD might raise the lethal ire of Saddam, being caught lying to Saddam would probably pose an even greater peril. Surely, someone would have found it to their temporary political advantage to inform upon others who were deceiving Saddam about WMD.

Should not additional information have cleared issues up one year later? Abby, how is it that some potentially revealing interesting developments have not received attention or reasonable scrutiny in the popular press?

Early this year, routine screening found a barrel containing several pounds of “yellow cake,” uranium oxide, in a shipment of junk metal from Jordon to Rotterdam. Uranium oxide can be refined into enriched uranium, a potential fuel for a nuclear weapon. The presence of the yellow cake was confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. An investigation found that the Jordanian junk dealer was acting in good faith and that the likely source of the material was Iraq. Uranium oxide is not found naturally in barrels. Someone in the Middle East region, Jordan, Syria, or Iraq was the source of material and the matter is directly relevant to determining which of the above three scenarios is the most likely. Abby, am I missing something, or is this an important clue here?

This last month, Jordan claims to have thwarted an attack by Al Qaeda that would have used chemical agents, potentially killing tens of thousands. Now the Jordanian government is not particularly reliable, but there seems to be very little reason for it to create this incident. Abby, should not evidence that Al Qaeda operatives, in the geographic vicinity of Syria and Iraq, have chemical weapon capability be the subject of intense scrutiny and interest?

Perhaps it is difficult for news organizations to untangle the circuitous route of nuclear material or uproot Al Qaeda plots in Jordan, but they should at least by apply pressure to authorities to track down clues to the disposition of Iraqi WMD. Why are these cases not leading the evening news? If they have been debunked, let’s hear the evidence? Silence is not sufficient. Abby, can you help me understand?

— Still Confused

Human institutions are by nature flawed because they are composed of imperfect human beings. Although talented and honest people are necessary for the long-term success of any institution, internal checks and balances are also essential. Lately, it has become apparent that the United Nations is not populated with a sufficient number of people of character and integrity and the honest ones that remain are not buttressed by sufficient institutional mechanisms to protect them.

When called upon to administer the Oil-for-Food Program, the UN not only allowed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to skim money off the top — money intended to provide food and medical supplies to Iraqi children — but skimmed some of it off for themselves. Not managing to keep Hussein from surreptitiously stealing from his own people may be slightly mitigated as amazingly negligent incompetence. Participating in the theft represents corruption of the highest order.

It all started in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Hussein was required to make a full accounting of the destruction of his weapons of mass destruction as well as forgo his aid to foreign terrorist organizations. The international community concluded that the Iraqi regime had not complied with the terms of the armistice. As a way to apply pressure to the regime, most trade with Iraq was prohibited. Although some humanitarian aid was permitted, the Iraqi regime and human rights organizations complained that though the sanctions were aimed at Hussein, the children of

To alleviate the problem, the United Nations started the Oil-for-Food Program. Iraq would be permitted to sell portions of its oil in exchange for food and other humanitarian supplies. Administering such a large program is admittedly difficult, but it is something for which the UN ought to exhibit particular competence. If it can not manage to do this, it is hard to understand what else they could be good at. Inexplicably, the UN permitted Iraq to pick both the companies it sold oil to and the companies from which it would purchase supplies. Hence, Hussein was able to skim money off both ends.

It worked this way. Iraq would sell oil at below market rates to companies it selected. After the re-sale of the oil, these companies would then kickback funds directly to the Iraqi government. Similarly, the Iraqi government would purchase food and supplies at above market rates from hand-picked companies and would later receive a kick back. As a consequence, the General Accounting Office reports that the Iraqi regime skimmed at least $10 billion intended for Iraqi children. All this was happening while the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization as well as the UN Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reported that 200 children were dying everyday (more than 5000 per month) due to sanctions.

Investigative reporting by the Wall StreetJournal and Commentary Magazine has documented that one of the beneficiaries of skimmed money was Benon Sevan, the UN Executive Director of the Oil-for-Food Program. In the first year of the program, most of the transactions were open, but after Sevan took over a veil of secrecy was drawn over the program for “proprietary” reasons. It has been reported that Iraq was using a Panamanian firm to send money directly to Sevan. Moreover, a Swiss-based firm, Cotecna Inspections, with ties to Kojo Annan, son of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, was in charge of inspecting shipments bound for Iraq. There were no declarations or even considerations of an apparent conflict of interest. Among items that were approved for humanitarian aid by the company were a Mercedes Benz and equipment for the Iraqi Departments of Justice and Information.

Other evidence indicates that much of the Oil-for-Food funding was routed through the French bank now known as BNP Paribas and that French and Russian firms were favorite choices of Hussein for below market price oil sales. Conclusive evidence is still out on the French and the Russians. However, the fact that the French and the Russians were both benefactors of Iraqi largesse and the French and Russians made sure the Security Council would never endorse the use of force against Iraq deserves greater scrutiny. If it turns out that the French and Germans acted in the Security Council for largely pecuniary purposes, it would damage the prestige and moral authority, such as it is, of French and Russian and the UN. It is hard to argue that the UN is an honest broker when it is taking payoffs on the side.

Embarrassed by the scandal, Kofi Annan now has asked Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, to lead an investigation. However, it is not clear where all the records are and if Volcker will be able to come to some definitive conclusions about the scandal.

The Bush Administration is trying to broaden the international participation in the reconstruction of by enlisting the UN to help in the transition to Iraqi authority. While this is probably a wise move, we should be careful of what we wish for. We may get it.

Wars have their turning points. In the American Revolutionary War, well-disciplined Americans under the leadership of General Horatio Gates at Saratoga forced British General John Burgoyne to give up his attempt to physically split the young United States by marching south from Canada. The victory convinced the French that the colonies had a credible chance to win their independence from Britain. Subsequent military support from the French was crucial in the American victory.

In the American Civil War, it seemed that General Robert E. Lee’s perpetual successes would insure that Union forces would never be able to decisively defeat the Confederate States. Emboldened by his victory at Chancellorsville, Virginia in May 1863, Lee believed that by striking deeply into Union territory he could sap the will of the Union and sue for some sort of peace. Fortunately for the Union, Lee met surprisingly strong resistance from troops led by General George G. Meade at Gettysburg. Lee was forced to withdraw and the ultimate outcome of the Civil War never seemed in doubt afterwards.

During the Vietnam War, the surprising attacks by the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive in 1968 convinced many, at least the American elites, that victory by the North was inevitable. The ironic part was that in Vietnam, the American response to the Tet Offensive was heartening to the South Vietnamese. The North took its best shot and was decisively repelled. However, the perception of victory or defeat appears to be at least as important as the actual facts.

Up until February, it appeared that perhaps Iraq was settling into a level of normalcy. Economic activity is exploding, unemployment is plummeting, children are attending school, and oil production has surpassed pre-war levels. The number of Coalition casualties was dwindling. February experienced the lowest level of Coalition casualties since liberation.

Somewhere in March, the level of violence exploded, symbolized by the gruesome burning and display of American contractors by Islamo-fascists in Fallujah. Fallujah is a stronghold of Sunni Muslims who profited under the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein. Loyalists to the former regime were never routed out of Fallujah during the initial hostilities. Baghdad fell before Coalition troops reached Fallujah and the Saddam Hussein loyalists faded into the populace rather than fight. Undeterred, they are now trying to disrupt the transfer of power to Iraqi authorities. A free Iraq ruled democratically would certainly diminish their position. Indeed, captured documents reveal Sunni intentions to attack the majority Shite population. Those that seize hostages and directly target civilians for violence conspicuously reveal their minute moral stature.

In order for the fledging Iraqi democracy to take root, ordinary Iraqis must be convinced that they will not be abandoned by the Americans until security is established and a stable Iraqi government assumes full authority over the country. Those who are certain that they could not achieve political leadership through a democratic process have no choice but to use violence and intimidation. Make no mistake about it, almost by definition, the forces for disruption in Iraq are anti-democratic and anti-freedom.

The current chaos in Iraq represents both a crisis and an opportunity. If Americans can find a way to maintain security while moving Iraq toward political normalcy, a turning point will have occurred in Iraq. It is, of course, always possible that a victory in Iraq will not be portrayed as such in the media. Fascist insurgents realize they cannot win a military victory and they seek to secure the important propaganda one.