Britt Hume of Faux Noise told his viewers that Valerie Plame Wilson lied under oath; Faiz at Think Progress debunks; see also John Amato. Of course, it doesn’t matter what the facts are. Next week this talking point will spill over into MSNBC, CNN, and various print media, carried by the usual rightie stooges. Watch especially for Ed Rogers and Kate O’Beirne to show up on Hardball to make this noise. I further predict Chris Matthews will not challenge whatever they say. And it wouldn’t matter much if he did; the True Believers will accept whatever lie the Right cooks up about the Wilsons without question, and no amount of facts will change their minds.

Friday I caught a little bit of a CSPAN program in which Brian Lamb took calls discussing the recent “confessions” of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Several callers declared that the confession proved that “torture works,” thereby displaying the critical thinking skills of moth larvae. Some of the callers clearly had no idea who KSM was and were under the impression he was someone the FBI nabbed inside the U.S. recently. One caller demanded to know how “these people” are getting into the U.S.; Brian Lamb helpfully explained that the CIA probably had flown him to Guantanamo from wherever he was before on a plane.

This morning I wrote about Iraq war supporters who got themselves worked up over what was surely an unfounded rumor that antiwar protesters planned to deface the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. Today they are congratulating each other for “saving” the monument from a threat that existed only in their own overheated imaginations.

For some reason the U.S. has always had a disproportionate number of whackjobs among its citizens; that ain’t new. And the whackjobs have had political influence at various times in the past, also. What’s different is that mass media and the Internet are allowing them to live in their own self-made Crazy World on a mass scale. And the Republicans are heavily invested in keeping them crazy.

From time to time (most recently here) I ramble on about how activism and demonstrations, done stupidly, can backfire and do more harm than good to the cause. Today we have an example of what a backfire looks like. (And, yes, I understand the backfire is way out of proportion to the alleged act that triggered it; this is pretty much always true.)

Brigid Schulte reports for the Washington Post:

As war protesters marched toward Arlington Memorial Bridge en route to the Pentagon yesterday, they were flanked by long lines of military veterans and others who stood in solidarity with U.S. troops and the Bush administration’s cause in Iraq. Many booed loudly as the protesters passed, turned their backs to them or yelled, “If you don’t like America, get out!”

Several thousand vets, some of whom came by bus from New Jersey, car caravans from California or flights from Seattle or Michigan, lined the route from the bridge and down 23rd Street, waving signs such as “War There Or War Here.” Their lines snaked around the corner and down several blocks of Constitution Avenue in what organizers called the largest gathering of pro-administration counter-demonstrators since the war began four years ago.

The vets turned both sides of Constitution into a bitter, charged gantlet for the war protesters. “Jihadists!” some vets screamed. “You’re brain-dead!” Others chanted, “Workers World traitors must hang!” — a reference to the Communist newspaper. Some broke into “The Star-Spangled Banner” as war protesters sought to hand out pamphlets.

Most of us might agree that these counter-demonstrators overdosed on Kool-Aid sometime back. The counter-demonstration was organized by one of those astroturf organizations that pretends to be independent but is really an auxiliary of the Republican Party. But note this:

At a Jan. 27 antiwar rally, some protesters spray-painted the pavement on a Capitol terrace. Others crowned the Lone Sailor statue at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue with a pink tiara that had “Women for Peace” written across it.

Word of those incidents ricocheted around the Internet.

“That was the real catalyst, right there,” said Navy veteran Larry Bailey. “They showed they were willing to desecrate something that’s sacred to the American soul.”

Well before 7 a.m., hundreds of people milled about near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in an effort to, they said, “occupy the ground” and keep any disrespectful war protesters away.

“This is sacred ground to us,” said Rick De Marco, 62, a Vietnam veteran from Cleveland.

It’s sacred ground to me, too, and to a lot of liberals and antiwar activists. I hate to think that anyone on our side planned to vandalize it. If anyone has any direct knowledge of any antiwar group threatening to deface the Vietnam Memorial, please up. I suspect any threats to the Vietnam memorial were fabricated by the Right, but I don’t know. (Also note below that leftie blogger BlondeSense is skeptical the spray-painting actually happened.)

I find this fascinating:

Within days of the spray-painting, people were using he Web to organize, making it their mission to protect the monuments, support the troops and accept nothing less than victory in Iraq.

Gathering of Eagles, the group that organized the protest, was so worried about threats to the monuments that it hired private security to guard the Wall, said Harry Riley, 69, a retired Army colonel from Florida. Other vets patrolled the area through the night and early morning, he said.

By early morning, the National Park Service had installed two metal detectors and carefully controlled entry along the path leading to the Wall. Blue-helmeted riot police were stationed along the length of the Wall. For a time, a handful of vets paraded back and forth with American flags waving in the stiff, cold breeze.

This has “stunt” written all over it. Where were these alleged threats coming from? Did someone in the White House arrange for riot police to make the threat more credible?

But this is how backfires happen. I saw it time and time again during the Vietnam years. Some small number of protesters would do something stupid, such as vandalism or waving a North Vietnamese flag during a protest march. Then the Nixon Administration would use the incident to discredit the entire antiwar movement and stir up public anger against it. Thus, Nixon used the antiwar movement to deflect much public criticism of his handling of the war. Although the Vietnam War was unpopular, large chunks of the American public hated the antiwar movement even more.

Nixon’s operatives were very good at getting groups of people fired up about the dirty bleeping hippies and then arranging for those groups to counter-protest. For example, when Vietnam Veterans Against the War planned a march to Valley Forge in 1970, White House staffer Chuck Colson arranged for local VFW chapters to confront the VVAW. (A documentary of the march is said to contain footage of the VFW members spitting on the Vietnam vets.) Colson also had a hand in arranging the “hard hat parade” of May 1970. The parade got national television news coverage and helped Richard Nixon paint the protesters as “effete snobs” and privileged elitists who didn’t appreciate the virtues of hard-working “middle America.”

But let’s return to the present. BlondeSense was there:

… there was a significant anti-peace crowd who came to make their presence known, and a surprisingly high number were veterans. At the prior marches, the pro-war contingent had been pitifully small (and by pitifully small I mean maybe a couple dozen). I will readily admit I was wrong to think the anti-peace crowd this time would be roughly the same. I estimate between 2,000 and 3,000 “uber-patriots” showed up on this occasion, suitably wrapped in the American flag, as if they and they alone owned it. They were a pretty foul bunch, widely profain and abusive. One thing that struck us as we walked past them was that they were almost universally white men: very few women; very few people of color. Interesting that there were no African-American or Latino vets among their ranks, given the disproportionate numbers of these who served in Viet Nam. Still, I learned a few things from them that I didn’t know before. Along with the usual “I’m not fonda Jane” signs, I was informed that I am a parasite, and that Nancy Pelosi is owned by al-Queda. Hmmm, learn something new every day.

Third, some who visit here may recall that at the march in January, there was a bit of a kerfuffle on the steps of the US Capitol, with the MSM reporting that the steps had been “defaced” with some spray paint by some young punk anarchists. Now, the part about the spray paint may or may not have been true (and I only have my own lying eyes to believe that it was not), but as a consequence, rumors apparently abounded that the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial was going to be defaced. So the Gathering of Beagles, as the anti-peace crowd called themselves (okay, not really, they called themselves the Gathering of Eagles, but I couldn’t resist because they sounded like so many hound dogs baying at the fox to me), were there to “protect” the memorial from us Godless, filthy, hippie-lovin’, librul scum. I’m going to state this as succintly as possible: Bullshit. I have a 99.9999% confidence level that no threats of that nature came from the anti-war protesters. To the extent such a threat actually happened, I’d be willing to make a significant wager that it was someone from the pro-war group who actually manufactured the threat in order to rally the vets to protect their hallowed ground. And to get coverage from the MSM regarding their “noble” cause. (Naturally, it worked.) In any event, access to the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial was tightly controlled, with each person being hand-searched before being allowed to visit the wall.

And I’m 99.9999% confident that BlondeSense is right about who started the rumors. It’s a classic rightie propaganda move. I’m only surprised it’s taken the Bush White House this long to get a counter-movement going, although that may be because public demonstrations against the war haven’t been as common as they were during Vietnam.

One of the groups behind the counter-protest is Move America Forward, which you can read about here. In a nutshell, MAF is an “astroturf” organization put together by a political consulting/public affairs firm with many connections to the Republican Party, and MAF’s organizers and boosters amount to a Who’s Who of American Wingnuts and Chickenhawks — Melanie Morgan, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Rush Limbaugh. The counter-demonstration was organized mainly by A Gathering of Eagles, which calls itself a “partner” organization to MAF. And if the “Eagles” aren’t astroturf, too, I’ll eat my mousepad.

At the end of the day the “Eagles” had successfully guarded the Vietnam Memorial from the fantasy threat. Expect to see more of them a future antiwar demonstrations. No expense will be spared to ensure a big turnout. The danger is that the “Eagles,” who are utterly oblivious to the fact that they’re being used, will goad antiwar demonstrators into shouting matches and fights that will make for great television (flag-waving, uniformed veterans versus dirty bleeping hippies) and deflect attention away from the war itself.

Update: See Sadly, No.

At Bob Geiger’s place.

You may have seen the YouTube video of Rep. David Obey blowing up at an antiwar activist. Yes, Obey was rude, but I think there is fault on both sides here.

Let’s start with activists. Scott Lilly writes,

Tina Richards, the mother of an Iraq war veteran, took the time and energy last week to travel from the rural Missouri Ozarks to her nation’s capital without taking the time to learn what Congress had the power to do with respect to her issue (the war) or what the political realities within Congress made it possible for opponents of the war to accomplish. Accosted by Richards and a crew of young antiwar activists in a Rayburn Office Building hallway, Obey eventually lost patience and responded in the brutally frank but thoroughly honest manner that has been his hallmark. …

…If opponents of the Iraq War truly care about stopping the carnage, it is worth the time and trouble to understand the political process and work for the smartest strategy to end this engagement rather than the one that is most extreme or viscerally satisfying. Passion is only part of the equation. In many instances, passion alone can be counterproductive.

Lilly brings up the Vietnam era. Although the scene in the video isn’t exactly parallel, he has a point that many of the “mindless antics” of protesters in those days didn’t exactly help. This is a point I harp on from time to time; smart activism is grand, but stupid activism is worse than no activism at all.

Harold Meyerson said something similar:

Last week, as he was working to build support for amendments that would impose a 2008 deadline on U.S. combat activities in Iraq, Obey was accosted by Tina Richards, an antiwar activist and mother of a Marine. With YouTube immortalizing the encounter, Richards asked Obey why he was supporting the supplemental war appropriations bill to which the amendments would be attached and why Congress couldn’t just defund the war and bring the troops home now.

Obey erupted. “We can’t get the votes,” he shouted. “Do you see a magic wand in my pocket? We don’t have the votes for it.”

“We’re trying to use the supplemental,” he explained, “to end the war.” Obey has since apologized for blowing up, but that hasn’t deterred some antiwar bloggers from condemning him as some loony warmonger. In a similar vein, other antiwar protesters now ring Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home, calling on her to bring the troops home now.

In effect, what the protesters are doing is making the unattainable perfect the enemy of the barely-attainable good.

Code Pink has been protesting in front of Pelosi’s San Francisco home. I’ll come to that in a minute.

Because Obey is quite right: The votes aren’t there to shut down funding for the war. What he and Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership in both houses are about is finding some way to curtail the president’s determination to pass the war on to his successor regardless of the continuing cost to U.S. interests and lives. Attaching conditions to the appropriations bill is not a foolproof way to accomplish that, as Pelosi and Obey would readily admit. It is merely the best of the imperfect options to wind down U.S. involvement in Iraq, given the narrowness of their congressional majorities and the presence of George W. Bush in the White House.

The antiwar bona fides of Obey and Pelosi are not only in good order, they’re a lot more impressive than those of just about any Democrat running for president. In October 2002, breaking with then-House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt, Pelosi led the opposition to the bill authorizing the president to go to war in Iraq. Obey voted with Pelosi and spoke forcefully against U.S. involvement.

Back to Scott Lilly:

Well-meaning people can argue about whether or not such a strategy [defunding] would be good policy or whether or not it would be good politics. But there is little room for argument as to whether such a stance is a viable legislative strategy. There are 435 members of the House and if all are present and voting, 218 must support a proposition before it can even clear the House and be sent to the Senate.

If your opposition to the war extends beyond the blogesphere into the real world where laws are made and decisions have consequences, you have to think about 218 votes, where they might come from and what specific language might make it possible to attain them. It is hard work and it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But it is a struggle that we will probably go through repeatedly in the coming months as the Congress and the White House face off on ways to put an end to our tragic involvement in Iraq.

Harold Meyerson:

What Pelosi and Obey understand that their critics on the left seem to ignore is that it will take numerous congressional votes and multiple confrontations with Bush to build the support required to end U.S. involvement. Thanks to the Constitution’s division of powers, Congress and the White House seem bound for months of fighting over the conditions attached to any approval of funds for continuing our operations in Iraq. Over time, as the war drags on, either enough Republicans will join their Democratic colleagues to put an end to U.S. intervention, or they will stick with Bush, thereby ensuring there will be a sufficient number of Democrats in the next Congress to end the war.

As a strategy for ending the war, that may not be a thing of beauty. It is, however, the best that our political and constitutional realities allow.

There was an op ed in yesterday’s New York Times by a couple of Clinton Administration justice department officials titled “The Purse Isn’t Congress’s Only Weapon.” They make a very strong argument that the “defunding” option is far from the only way to go, and may not be the best way to stop the war.

But Tina Richards got it into her head that the options are defunding or nothing. Tina Richards was on Hardball last Friday, and I will tell you frankly that she annoyed the hell out of me, because for someone who presumes to be an activist she is grossly naive and uninformed. Here’s part of the exchange.

MATTHEWS: You‘re smart. You‘re lobbying this issue. Why do you think a guy like Obey—he said it to you. I heard him say that. I watched the tape two or three times. He said, We can‘t cut off the funding because if we cut off the funding, we will be accused of cutting off armor and equipment for the soldiers fighting in the field.

RICHARDS: Exactly. And then he says that we can‘t get the votes. Yet you have the leadership of the Democratic Party, you have Nancy Pelosi, you have Steny Hoyer, you have Chris Van Holland (ph) all saying that, We can‘t get the votes, and then they use the Republican talking points as to what is happening if they do stop the funding. And it makes no sense. If they…

MATTHEWS: Well, they‘re saying two things. They‘re saying they don‘t have the 218 to pass the majority, and then they‘re saying, But if we do pass the majority, they‘ll kill us politically by saying, They‘ve cut off reinforcements to our troops in the field. You know that‘s what they‘re going to say.

RICHARDS: You know what? Yes. And I understand that the Republican talking points are exactly that. And the point is, is that our sons and daughters are dying over there every day. …

… MATTHEWS: How do we—how do you achieve your goal of ending this war in Iraq? How do you do it?

RICHARDS: There is the Lee amendment that asked for the fully funded withdrawal of the troops, which Obey had responded as a dismissal, not even to consider it, that I didn‘t know what I was talking about, without even looking…

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: … Barbara Lee of Oakland and Berkeley, yes.

RICHARDS: Yes. And he didn‘t even want to discuss that. And that was partly why I‘ve been on the Hill every single day…

MATTHEWS: But how many votes…

RICHARDS: … trying to lobby Congress.

MATTHEWS: … do you think Barbara Lee‘s proposal would do, where it says, We‘ll spend enough money to bring the troops home but not to keep them there? How many votes do you think that would get in the Congress?

RICHARDS: I think that if Nancy Pelosi…

MATTHEWS: Fifty?

RICHARDS: … and Steny Hoyer and the Democrat leadership stopped exerting pressure to hush everybody that is coming out against it and started to support it, I think that they would have the votes to pass it.

MATTHEWS: But they don‘t think so.

RICHARDS: Because they‘re not trying. They‘re using the Republican talking points. As long as they‘re using the Republican talking points…

MATTHEWS: Are you saying that they‘re really for the war?

RICHARDS: I‘m saying that they‘re trying to do what‘s politically savvy and not what‘s best for our troops.

MATTHEWS: How do you think they can actually get the 218 votes that are necessary to pass a majority and cut off the money?

RICHARDS: Well, I think…

MATTHEWS: They say they can‘t find those votes. I heard Obey yelling at you. He got overwrought there. You got him excited.

RICHARDS: I was hearing that, and then…

MATTHEWS: And he was saying, We just—I don‘t have a magic wand. He opened up his coat like this, he says, I don‘t have a magic wand in here. Where‘s my 218 votes? Could you help him do it? Would you have—do you have enough power in your group, or anybody in the anti-war forces, to get 218 Democrats to end this war?

MATTHEWS: I‘m just one person. I‘m a mother.

MATTHEWS: I know. You got…

RICHARDS: And I spoke with Reverend Nearwood (ph) the other day, and he said the power of a mother‘s love can bring down nations.

MATTHEWS: But can it get 218 votes in the House of Representatives?

Harold Meyerson:

There are those, of course, who object to Pelosi’s even having a strategy to end the war. The lead editorial in yesterday’s Post, for example, took Pelosi to task as playing politics with the war by attempting to craft legislation that could actually win votes from all wings of her party. “The only constituency” that “Pelosi ignored in her plan,” The Post complained, “are the people of the country that U.S. troops are fighting to stabilize.” Rather than heeding the needs of Iraqis, Pelosi is concentrating on the 2008 elections, The Post concluded.

My paper, I fear, is off by two years. If the United States is still in Iraq come November 2008, the Democrats will sweep to power. It’s the 2006 elections that are to blame for this nefarious Democratic plan to wind down the war, for the Democrats ran on precisely that platform, and, more to the point, they won on it. The only constituency that The Post ignored in its assessment of Pelosi’s plan, and the chief constituency she is trying to heed, is the American people. They have charged the Pelosis and Obeys with the messy task of ending this fiasco, which, to their credit, is exactly what Pelosi and Obey are trying to do.

That doesn’t mean activists should go home. Scott Lilly:

At a very minimum, I would urge my fellow Ozarker, Tina Richards, to refocus her efforts in at least one respect. Your representative in Congress is not Dave Obey; it is Jo Ann Emerson, who is also a member of the Appropriations Committee. Unlike Obey, however, she does not (at least openly) agree with you on the President’s Iraq policy. If you, your friends, and your neighbors would spend more time talking to Emerson, then Obey might find the votes for language that you and he would both like better than the language on which he will likely be forced to settle.

Exactly. Go after congress critters who support the bleeping war. Instead of whining, work to round up those 218 votes. I’ll say the same thing to the Code Pink twits who are camping out at Pelosi’s home — stop being stupid. Stop grandstanding and throwing publicity stunts and put your energies into compiling those 218 votes. There are plenty of other people in the House, including many Democrats, who need their feet held to fire; Pelosi is not one of them.

At Talk Left, Big Tent Democrat complains that Scott Lilly endorsed “doing nothing.” No, dear; he’s asking people who presume to be activists to stop being stupid about it.

I’ll say it again: The Vietnam era experience taught us that stupid activism is worse than no activism at all. Stupid activism plays into the hands of the opposition. If you’re going to be a stupid activist, please stay home. But if you can do your homework, understand the issues, and appreciate which people in congress are working for us and which aren’t, then by all means — be an activist.

I’m not going to let Pelosi and Obey off the hook entirely. I think they could be doing more to keep us informed of what they are up to. There’s so much noise in media that it is hard to separate what’s real from what’s propaganda. I checked Pelosi’s congressional web page, and there is no information on where she is at this moment on the Iraq issue. We need direct communication between Congress and people who oppose the war, and bloggers can play a part in that. For that matter, they could post information on Huffington Post or several other well-trafficked sites. There’s no excuse for anyone in Congress to rely only on the MSM to get their message out.

Tina Richards is from Salem, Missouri, which is a lovely community not too far from where I grew up. Her son, a Marine, has served two tours of duty. She is obviously sincere and passionate about ending the war, and she says on her web site that she wants Rep. Obey, who has apologized to her, to join her “in a calm and respectful dialogue that will allow us to find common ground to end ‘this stupid war.'”

But respect goes both ways, and frankly if I were Congressman Obey I wouldn’t want to “dialogue” with anyone — especially [someone who is] not a constituent — who hasn’t even tried to understand what the options are. If you are going to presume to be an activist on a particular issue, you really ought to learn something about it first. Just being passionate and well-intentioned is not enough.

David Sirota:

Saul Alinsky’s famous mantra is that successful organizers and activists have to start with the world as it is, not as the utopia we want it to be. That is the difference between people serious about challenging power and people serious only about blowing off steam and promoting themselves. The war is too huge an issue to allow the latter to substitute for the former. We can stop the war – but only if we buckle down, get serious and do the hard, unglamorous work that it will take to be successful.