One of my favorite pieces of the Shaheen-Hypocrisy pie, of which there are many, is her evolving stance on the war in Iraq.  She was for it before she was against it.  This of course means she is party to the “we were misled crowd,” the excuse we get from invertebrate politicians, about why they overwhelmingly voted to go to war, (or publicly announced they were in favor of it) but later changed their position.

A thoughtful legislator (or legislator in waiting) should be more than willing to acknowledge that there were plenty of good reasons to take out the dictator, and we all felt that had to happen.  And Shaheen was only one of many people who spoke out in favor, appearing to have a grasp on the important issues, supported sending soldiers into harms way.

But far fewer had the character or courage to acknowledge after the fact that we didn’t or couldn’t have anticipated all the problems that would result from deposing Saddam in that environment, at that time, in that manner.  When these problems created instability, when it was clear we had a serious problem—one that might leave Iraq worse off than it was before we showed up, instead of engaging in the  effort to plumb the potential benefits or consequences of every option,  the democ-rats jumped ship.

The democrat’s solution to being misled into war was to embark on a massive effort to mislead us out of it.  The Democrat leadership demanded an immediate pull out and established a full court press within the government and the media to force an immediate withdrawal.  The legions of the left, regardless of the conditions, followed if not obediently, then at least blindly along, mislead into surrender, regardless of the consequences. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, misleading us became the centerpiece of their retreat strategy.  They not only ignored any sign of eventual success, they banded together to deny it to the press and the public at every opportunity.  Democrats in and out of office repeatedly made public statements of defeat, and announced the futility of continuing the effort, contrary to mounting evidence, without any consideration for its affects on anything other than their political careers.   

But after months and of military successes, the broad campaign-of-contradiction the democrats had erected against the surge eventually became untenable.  When even the media had begun to notice, and could no longer excuse themselves for not reporting at least some of it, the democrat party decided that we were now, in fact, fighting the wrong war, once again making another dramatic change in course, never considering that each of these policy moves was at least as misleading as any previous one.

The political pattern continued, as democrats now simply ignored any success in either theatre—even the one they now claimed we should be in–and ran a parallel campaign of election year pandering directed to play off their excuse of a war policy.  Every conceivable domestic or foreign issue-real or imagined—would be linked to an “expensive, misguided war.”  In their now obsessive quest, democrats advanced these “relationships” as fast as the DNC could turn them out, taking the concept of “misleading” to an entirely new level.

Jeanne claims we were misled into a war—but ignores her own complicity in trying to mislead us out of it.  She ignored the consequences of surrender.  She helped hide success when it came.  And she toed the party line all the while promising us that as our Senator she’d vote for New Hampshire.  With so little regard for the consequences of our enemies in Al Qaeda achieving their one true goal of securing a Muslim state from which to fund and launch its mission to conquer the Middle East, what else could she be misleading us about?