MoveOn fires back

[babylonsister]

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/moveon-fires-back-2007-09-11.html

MoveOn fires back
By Klaus Marre
September 11, 2007

MoveOn.org, the liberal group that enraged Republicans this week by alleging that Gen. David Petraeus was “cooking the books” with regard to the situation in Iraq, is asking its members to engage in a grassroots effort to help bring U.S. troops home.

In an e-mail to supporters, the group said Petraeus “misled the country” in his testimony before the House on Monday. MoveOn wants its members to write letters to the editors of local and national newspapers and question the findings Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker presented to Congress. The group provides talking points to support its view that Petraeus “used faulty statistics and cherry-picked intelligence to argue that American troops should stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future.”

An ad placed in The New York Times by MoveOn referred to Petraeus as “General Betray Us” and caused a major stir in Congress. Measures have been introduced on both chambers of Congress to condemn it, and several Republicans have referenced the advertisement during the hearings. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who sponsored the Senate measure condemning the ad, called it “abhorrent.”

However, the group appears undeterred. It compares the testimony of Petraeus to that of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who made the case for an invasion of Iraq before the United Nations in 2003. MoveOn said that, had it run a similar ad back then, Republicans “would have done the same thing — but sometimes it’s important to set the facts straight.”

The White House weighed in on the matter Tuesday, with Bush spokesman Tony Snow saying that the ad, coupled with pictures of anti-war activists disrupting the hearings on Iraq, were not good for the Democrats.