We frequently hear from the pro-war advocates that protesting the war will demoralize our troops, making it more dangerous for them to be in the middle of the war.  I can see where this might be true - were it not for the effort that anti-war forces have put into assuring our soldiers that our disagreement is with the purpose of the war, not with the men and women who have been sent to fight it. 

I have to wonder, though, if the unreasonably optimistic view painted by the government in the months leading up to the war hasn't had a demoralizing effect of its own?  Granted, it is possible that things may change and show that the predictions made by Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and others weren't overly optimistic at all, but I, for one, doubt that will be the case.  Unless things change, however, our nation's warriors are currently fighting a fierce battle they were told would likely be easy, and facing anger and resistance from people they were told would be welcoming them as joyous throngs throwing flowers in the streets and waiving flags.  What could be more demoralizing than that?  To think that you are going into a battle to free an oppressed people only to find they don't necessarily want your help?

Ari Fleischer is now trying to say that Bush was "upfront" with us about the prospects for the war, and, in that kind of twisted way politicians have, that may well be true.  Bush, himself, said little about how he thought the war might go - he was more insistant on pressing his believe that it simply must go.  Yet others in the administration weren't nearly as cautious.  On the Sunday before the war began, Dick Cheney went on the Sunday talk shows and promoted his belief that the war would be over quickly.

On CBS's "Face the Nation" on March 16, Cheney said the fight would be "weeks rather than months. There's always the possibility of complications that you can't anticipate, but I have great confidence in our troops." Cheney also predicted the fight would "go relatively quickly, but we can't count on that." That same day on NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney said, "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." It was then he predicted that the regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle," and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside." Asked if Americans are prepared for a "long, costly and bloody battle," Cheney replied: "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way. . . . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein, and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that." Cheney has spoken that way for months.

Cheney, of course, wasn't the only one promoting an optimistic view:

• Vice Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf: "The campaign will be unlike any we have ever seen in the history of warfare, with breathtaking precision, almost eye-watering speed, persistence, agility and lethality."
  
  He also noted that the the war as "a short, extremely intense period of combat operations using a full range of U.S. and coalition forces. This phase will eliminate any significant organized resistance to U.S. coalition forces and will end the current regime."
  
  
• Richard Perle also had his own comments on the matter, saying that "support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder."
  
  Perle also predicted that only 10% of the Iraqi army would be loyal to Saddam and that the war "will be quicker and easier than many people think. He is far weaker than many people realize."

With the President having generally stayed silent on the issue of how long the war might last or how difficult it would be, these optimistic statements were the main "official" words we - and our soldiers - heard from the administration.  A current CBS News poll, 55% of those surveyed feel that we have underestimated the Iraqi forces and their resolve.  On 37% thought our estimation was accurate.

It's bad enough when the government misleads us on the prospects of how a war will go in order to make people more willing to accept the idea (short, quick, easy wars being far easier to sell than a longer, more drawn-out conflict), but when they do so in such a way that leads our soldiers to also believe that they will be welcomed by joyous civilians as "liberators" puts it into an entirely different category. 

MediaGuardian.co.uk has an interesting article on some of the reports that have come out of the war and were later found to either be untrue or at least questionable.  It covers stories about the 2 columns of tanks - each with 1,000 vehicles, that were said to be coming out of Baghdad, as well as the tank column of 120 tanks that was said to have been coming out of Basra, the discovery of the alleged chemical weapons plant, the taking of Umm Qasr, the executions of 2 British soldier POWs by the Iraqi army, and the popular uprising in Basra.

One comment really caught my eye, though:

On Monday, much of the British press treated the discovery with some caution. Part of the scepticism stemmed from the fact that one of the board members of the Jerusalem Post is Richard Perle, the Bush defence adviser and most vocal backer of the invasion of Iraq.

Definately qualifies as one of those "things that make you go Hmmmm....." While there's no proof at this time that Perle had anything at all to do with the story - it certainly is an interesting coincidence.