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America’s Home-grown ‘Baghdad Bobs’
by
Gregory J. Rummo
In a column I
wrote in March, at the height of the peace rallies,
when public opinion seemed as if it were totally
against the U.S.-led coalition to invade Iraq, I
wrote: “I have the perfect solution for both hawks
and doves alike although the peaceniks will have to practice what they preach. While we invade Iraq,
they can wait patiently for four weeks. When the
shooting stops, we can allow the inspectors to
resume their inspections, taking all the time they
need.”
Here we are, 28 days after the war started and the
Pentagon has declared the main fighting is
finished. Two aircraft carriers will be leaving the
Persian Gulf, bound for America and the families
who are anxiously waiting to see their loved ones return home.
Everything happened just as we were told by the
Bush administration: The war wouldn’t be over
in a week but it wouldn’t take months either. There
would be surrenders but the Iraqis wouldn’t be
total
pushovers. Once the people of Iraq figured out they
were finally delivered from “Monsters Inc.,” they
would embrace our troops and they did.
Other countries in the Arab world are stunned. Even
CNN and Al Jazeera can’t spin the
outcome any other way than the obvious.
As Hitler was defeated, as the Iron Curtain
eventually came down and as the Berlin Wall
collapsed, so too did Saddam Hussein’s reign of
terror topple—his statue in the middle of Baghdad
cut
off at the legs and his head dragged through the
streets. Posters of the cruel dictator have been
defaced,
spit and urinated upon and I can only imagine what
else.
Jackie Gleason would have said, “How sweet it is.”
Good has triumphed over evil.
It wasn’t easy. It never is.
There was lots of opposition—and I am not talking
about the enemy.
The pantywaists in Europe—France and Germany—made
it difficult at first until we decided to
ignore them. Disappointingly, Russia has been found
to have aided and abetted the enemy, whether
knowingly or not is still unanswered.
These should be made to sit on their hands now and
watch as the countries which helped the
U.S.-led coalition get a piece of the pie in Iraq’s
reconstruction.
But most disheartening was the opposition here at
home.
I don’t mean the rants coming from the usual crowd
of vapid anti-capitalist, pro Kyoto, left-wing
extremist America-haters. They have the right to
make fools of themselves which they do every time
by
hypocritically making use of the God-given, blood
bought freedom guaranteed in our First Amendment
to protest in the country they hate so much. Had
they tried similar tactics in Iraq, it would have
been their
corpses our troops would be unearthing.
But they got traction from the mainstream media
which was largely complicit in offering aid and
comfort to these fruit cakes. Pro-America rallies
were hardly covered on the nightly news. Media
Research Center reported there were no anti-war
protests “too small to earn coverage from ABC's
Peter Jennings who in recent months has highlighted
anti-war events involving just a few hundred
people,
a ‘virtual’ protest and even one guy who jumped off
a bridge.” The article went on to report that
pro-troop rallies featuring 15,000 in New York City
were ignored by Jennings.
And many journalists betrayed their deep-seated
bias against George Bush by being as wrong as
they could be. Here are a couple of examples:
The Washington Post published a front-page story on
April 4 that claimed, “The U.S. invasion
force, built around one tank-heavy Army division
and one lighter Marine division, is not large or
powerful
enough to take Baghdad by force, especially with
tens of thousands of heavily armed fighters
believed
loyal to Hussein still inside the sprawling city.”
The New York Times’ R. W. Apple wrote on March 27
in a piece titled “Iraqis Learn the
Lessons of How U.S. Fights Wars,” that “Saddam
Hussein had learned a lot since his forces were
routed in the Persian Gulf war in 1991.” Mr. Apple
predicted that Saddam would bog down the
coalition forces’ march to Baghdad through
guerrilla warfare.”
Israel wasn’t attacked, casualties weren’t in the
“tens of thousands,” and Iraq wasn’t a
“Vietnam-like quagmire.” Finding caches of WMDs is
simply a matter of time now that senior Iraqi
scientists have surrendered and are free to speak
without fear of their children’s tongues being
ripped
from their faces.
Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas writes, “When the
Berlin Wall fell and Eastern Europe
escaped from the shackles of communism, I wrote
that we must not forget the enablers, apologists
and
other ‘fellow travelers’ who helped sustain
communism's grip on a sizable portion of humanity
for much
of the 20th century. I suggested that a ‘cultural
war crimes tribunal’ be convened, at which people
from
academia, the media, government and the clergy who
were wrong in their assessment of communism
would be forced to confront their mistakes. While
not wishing to deprive anyone of his or her right
to be
wrong, it wouldn't hurt for these people to be held
accountable.”
I am reminded of the absurd propaganda-laced
ramblings of “Baghdad Bob,” Mohammed
Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information,
whose most noteworthy observation: “There you can
see, there is nothing going on,” was made as
pictures of U.S. troops were being shown standing
under
the giant crossed swords in Saddam's favorite
parade grounds in Baghdad.
We have our own “Baghdad Bobs” in newsrooms across
America. Will they ever be forced to
give an account? I’m not holding my breath.
Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist. Visit
his website,
www.GregRummo.com
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