In 2004, Bully Boy Bush and John Kerry squared off over Iraq for the presidential election with Kerry insisting he'd fight the 'dumb' war 'smarter'. And that proposal was supposed to pass for peace. Meanwhile, Bully Boy declared that the Iraq War was being won and blah, blah, blah.
In 2006, Democrats campaigned on the Iraq War, calling it out, saying it was lost, the 'dumb war,' the 'wrong war at the wrong time' and, if they were given control of just one house of Congress, they would, they insisted, end the Iraq War. They were given control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 mid-terms. The Iraq War did not end.
In 2008, Barack Obama insisted he'd always been against the Iraq War. And no one was supposed to ever ask, "Really? Even when voting to fund it?" He insisted he was against the Iraq War and would, if elected president, bring it to an end within sixteen months. Later, while campaigning for the Democratic Party's nomination, he lowered that to ten months.
As with 2006 Dems, it helped him get elected.
But he didn't keep his campaign promise.
And he made a lot of other mistakes.
Chief among them: Appointing the unqualified Chris Hill to be the US Ambassador to Iraq.
In 2012, don't be surprised if Iraq's still an election year issue. Republicans opposed Chris Hill's nomination. At least two of them did that because they honestly believed he shouldn't be the ambassador. Some of the others opposing him did so because they believed Chris Hill was their party's ticket back into the White House.
How so?
They oppose Hill and Hill screws up and they've got their out on the disaster that is Iraq.
The line some Republicans are preparing for 2012 goes something like this: "Iraq is a disaster. Barack Obama did not give it enough attention and allowed all the benefits resulting from Bush's surge to disappear. Not only that, he appointed Chris Hill who was unfamiliar with the region, unable to speak the language and incapable of doing the job required."
Their argument then cites specific examples of Hill's failures.
Could it succeed? Could the Republicans win back the White House based on Iraq?
They very well could.
That's because the bulk of the left media no longer focuses on Iraq, no longer cares. So what, you may ask?
The right wing's not being silent. This is just like in the documentary Sir! No Sir! when Jane Fonda is explaining that people ask her why she has to keep going back to the topic of Vietnam and she points out that the right wing never stops going back. And she's right. They don't stop.
So what's gone in 2009 and this year so far is that the right continues to cover Iraq. And the left (with few exceptions) ignores it. So in 2012, the right may have spent three years spinning on Iraq while the left said nothing. Spin takes hold via repetition. Spin takes hold when no one challenges it. Spin takes hold when one side abdicates their responsibility to tell the truth.
You may think the Iraq War is in the past and we all know what happened and how. You may think that. You would be very wrong.
As noted in last Wednesday's snapshot, KETK 56 'reported' on Iraq, allegedly examining whether or not the illegal war was worth it. But for this 'report' on the Iraq War, they aired over two minutes of footage . . . of the Twin towers repeatedly going down, of Ground Zero and of the Pentagon.
Don't we all know that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 at this late date?
No, we don't all know that.
And once upon a time a lot of people believed the lie that Saddam was behind 9-11.
The lie was believed once. When the left drops the ball and allows the right to spin, the right wins. And when they're re-spinning? They win all the faster.
If the left continues to ignore Iraq and Iraq continues down the course it's always continued down since the start of the illegal war, 2012 won't be pretty and when Republicans insist (wrongly) that the 'surge' worked and that all was fixed and beautiful, a lot of people are going to believe it for the simple reason that between 2009 and 2012, they rarely heard a peep about Iraq. The silence (wrongly) allows many to believe things must have improved in Iraq or surely it would be big news.