Beyond Opinion

Last week, MoveOn.org was criticized for putting out an advertisement entitled "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" and featuring a picture of this general. Candidates from both parties criticized the ad, and some asked that it be withdrawn. MoveOn refused to do that. The ad said that what Petraeus was saying, and because Petraeus, as a military man, has to obey orders, what really the Bush Administration was saying, was that the Administration's claim that things are getting better in Iraq are false, and this can be verified. I thought the ad brought out a good point; what fouled it up was this amusing homophone - "Petraeus" sounds like "Betray Us". It made MoveOn sound like it was attacking Petraeus, when I feel that Bush is the one that is betraying us.

This week MoveOn came out with another ad. This one calls Rudy Giuliani to task for not attending meetings of an Iraq task force that he was a member of. Rudy says the problem was that the meeting dates of the force conflicted with his campaign dates. So he gave up the task force that he said he would be a part of just so that he can get a few more words out to people to vote for him. This means I am not going to vote for Giuliani. If you tell someone you are going to be a part of an organization, you have the obligation to attend that organization's functions. This is especially the case when it deals with a weighty matter such as the war in Iraq. To me Giuliani has just shown that he is untrustworthy.

A YouTube video submitter urged me to give the MoveOn video five stars, the top rating. I checked out MoveOn's claims. MoveOn gives a detailed list of references for each of the statements that it makes in its ad. To me, this meant that a good deal of background research went into the ad. It was not something just thrown together. When Giuliani was confronted with the ad, he responded with an ad that said that he was "Moveon's greatest nightmare", and said absolutely nothing about whether he is right but instead engaged in campaign rhetoric. As far as I am concerned, MoveOn.org wins this one. I gave the video five stars. The greatest nightmare, in my opinion is if Giuliani gets elected.