House Democrats have passed a bill to stifle the good news that we're winning in Iraq.

Safe From Truth

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 23, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Anti-Militarism: House Democrats have passed a bill to stifle the good news that we're winning in Iraq. They are so invested in losing that they apparently fear a popular backlash against them from victory.

Congress seems to be acting out the role of Col. Nathan R. Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson in the film "A Few Good Men." When pinned in covering up a murder, Nicholson famously yells back at Tom Cruise, playing the interrogating attorney: "You can't handle the truth!"

Democrats have decided this election year that American voters can't handle the fact that victory in Iraq is at hand.

In its passage last week of the defense policy bill, the House issued a prohibition against the Pentagon's "concerted effort to propagandize" the American public regarding the Iraq War.

It came in the form of an amendment authored by Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., which also would authorize an investigation of the Defense Department's "propaganda" efforts by the Government Accountability Office.

Hodes' addition to the bill passed by voice vote and the overall bill passed the House by a large margin. The Senate will wait until after the holiday recess to consider it.

It's not as if the Pentagon brass, as they wage a global war on terrorism, don't have better things to do than sit down and answer foolish questions about public relations operations from a bunch of GAO bean-counters.

Besides, haven't congressional Democrats insisted all these years that it wasn't the military they had a problem with regarding the Iraq War? Haven't they been saying how much they support those in uniform, that our military leaders really agreed with Democrats that Iraq was unwinnable, and that it was only the civilians who run war policy in the Bush administration they were attacking?

According to Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., the Hodes provision could end up classifying even the U.S. Marines' slogan, "The Few, the Proud, the Marines," as a "concerted effort to propagandize" in violation of the law.

The Democrats' efforts to save America from good news in Iraq stem from a New York Times article last month charging that retired military officers appearing on TV were "puppets of the Defense Department" because they get frequent private briefings and talking points.

The paper called it "a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated."

How divided were the lines between government and journalism when the New York Times in 2005 refused the pleas of the White House not to endanger investigations that were in progress and alert terrorist plotters by exposing the National Security Agency's secret program to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of suspected terrorists?

Or when the Washington Post that same year imperiled national security by revealing the secret CIA interrogation program in which terrorist detainees were taken to foreign prisons where information that could prevent future attacks was extracted?

Democrats seem to be motivated largely by the notion that those who wear, or have worn, the uniform of the U.S. armed forces cannot be trusted. Witness Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, last week outrageously suggesting that presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain looks at everything "from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous."

As will be obvious again on this Memorial Day, most Americans trust and appreciate our servicemen and women. Their wrath is sure to fall on those who pass laws that presume them to be liars.