Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are setting
the coordinates for a very specific and incredibly
heated moment in recent history. We're going
to September 10th, 2007. Right. The Iraq War
is at an absolute fever pitch. The country is
completely divided. The Bush administration is,
you know, feeling the pressure and the whole
atmosphere is just... It was a powder keg. And
then a single full page ad appears in the New
York Times. And it basically lights the match.
We are talking about the infamous General Betrayus
ad. General Betrayus or General Betrayus. That
was the headline. Imagine seeing that staring
back at you over your morning coffee. It's a
pun that has gone down in political infamy. We're
not just here to look at a clever rhyme. Or maybe
not so clever, depending on your view. Exactly.
We've got a whole stack of material here, contemporary
news reports, legislative records, fact checks,
to really unpack what happened. We want to understand
how a print ad could target the commander of
U .S. forces, General David Petraeus, right as
he was about to give a pivotal report to Congress.
It's a perfect case study for us. It sits right
at that intersection of military reporting, media
ethics, and really the weaponization of outrage.
And the timeline is just wild. It goes from a
newspaper ad to a full -blown Senate condemnation.
Then a pricing scandal at the Times itself, a
huge fundraising windfall. And then years later,
this very quiet, almost... Orwellian scrubbing
of it from history. It's the complete lifecycle
of a political stunt. So let's set the scene.
September 2007. Why was the tension so high?
Why did this specific ad cause such a meltdown?
You have to remember the context of the surge.
The Bush administration had sent, what, about
30 ,000 more troops into Iraq? Right, to try
and stop the sectarian violence that was just
spiraling out of control. And General Petraeus
was the face of that strategy. He was the architect.
So he was scheduled to come to Capitol Hill and
report on whether it was actually working. The
stakes were enormous. If he says it's working,
the war continues. If he says it's failing, the
pressure to pull out becomes, you know, almost
impossible to ignore. Precisely. The country
was holding its breath. And MoveOn .org, which
was this very prominent anti -war liberal group,
they decided they couldn't just wait for the
report. They wanted to discredit the messenger.
Before he even opened his mouth, it was a preemptive
strike. So they buy this full -page ad. Now,
I want to get into the specific claims because
they didn't just say the war is bad. They made
a very personal, very specific charge against
Petraeus himself. The core accusation was that
a four -star general was, and I'm quoting here,
cooking the books for the White House. Cooking
the books. I mean, that's language you hear for
corporate fraud for Enron. It implies a deliberate
lie. It does. A calculated manipulation of data
to mislead the American people. So what were
they saying he was faking? Well, they had to
get specific. They claimed he was manipulating
the violence statistics using what the ad called
a bizarre formula. A bizarre formula. Yeah, the
ad alleged that the Pentagon had just decided
that, you know, deaths from car bombs didn't
count in the violence statistics anymore. Wait,
what? A car bomb in a marketplace is the definition
of violence. How could they claim that wasn't
being counted? The allegation was about reclassification,
making the trend lines look better to show this
drop in violence that maybe wasn't entirely real,
but it got even more granular than that. This
is the part I read in the notes that just sounds
like something out of a spy novel, the bullet
trajectory thing. It is gruesome. The ad claimed
that the Washington Post had reported on this
new metric the military was using. OK. It said
that if a bullet entered the back of a victim's
head, it was counted as sectarian violence. part
of the war. But if the bullet entered the front
of the head, it was just a regular murder. Criminal
violence. Exactly. So front of the head, it's
a crime stat. Back of the head, it's a war stat.
And by just shifting those buckets around, you
can make it look like the war is getting quieter,
even if people are still dying. That is an incredibly
heavy charge. You're telling the public the top
general is playing games with entry wounds to
sell a war. They also argued that in some neighborhoods
where violence had dropped, it was only because
of ethnic cleansing. Basically, it's quiet because
one side killed or drove out everyone from the
other side. OK, so we have the benefit of hindsight
here and we have the fact checkers in our stack.
Did these claims actually hold up? Not really.
The Washington Post's own fact checker looked
into it right away. I mean, because move on was
citing the post as a source. Right. The fact
checker concluded that move on did not provide
adequate factual support for the cooking the
books claim. And the car bombs. That seems pretty
easy to check. Yeah. The Post noted that Petraeus'
report did include data on car bombs. It wasn't
hidden. It wasn't excluded. OK. And what about
the most visceral claim, the front of the head
versus back of the head thing? The multinational
force in Iraq, the MNFI, they flatly denied it.
They issued a statement saying they made no distinction
whatsoever based on points of impact. So the
fact checkers just couldn't support that central,
most explosive claim. So you have a very shaky
factual basis. wrapped in a headline calling
a general a traitor during wartime. I'm guessing
the reaction in D .C. wasn't subtle. It was nuclear.
And this is where the story shifts from just
being about media criticism to being a political
disaster for the people who ran the ad. How so?
Usually this stuff splits right down party lines,
you know, Republicans attack, Democrats defend.
But this ad was so toxic, it just blew up and
move on space. OK, so the Republican reaction
is predictable, right? President Bush calls it
disgusting. Rudy Giuliani, who is running for
president, calls it character assassination.
That's the script. But the Democrats. They ran
for the hills. Really? Because move on is a huge
player on the left. You'd expect some cover.
Not this time. Senator John Kerry called it over
the top. Hillary Clinton, also running for president,
voted against impugning the patriotism of people
in uniform. So even the party's leaders were
distancing themselves. Even Joe Biden, he went
on Fox News and tried to, you know, thread the
needle. He said the point about the war might
be valid, but the ad itself went overboard. It's
pretty rare to see an advocacy group tick off
its own allies that badly. And it didn't stop
there, right? This actually made its way to the
Senate floor. It did. The Senate literally paused
its business to hold a vote on a newspaper ad.
A vote on an advertisement. Republican Senator
John Cornyn introduced an amendment. The text
was specifically to strongly condemn personal
attacks on the honor and integrity of General
Petraeus. And looking at the vote tally in our
notes. Yeah. It wasn't close. It was a landslide
past 72 to 25. That means a lot of Democrats
crossed the aisle to condemn the ad. The House
did the same thing. 341 to 79. There is one very
notable name missing from that Senate vote, though.
Ah, yes. Senator Barack Obama. He didn't vote.
He skipped it. He called the whole resolution
a stunt and empty politics. It's fascinating
looking back at the 2008 primary. You have Clinton
voting to condemn the attack on Petraeus and
Obama just refusing to even participate. It's
incredible. But there's another layer to this
that I find so interesting because it gets into
the plumbing of how media works. The money. The
discount scandal. Yeah, this is where it gets
messy for The New York Times. So. Move On paid
$65 ,000 for this full -page ad. Now, I don't
buy ads in the Times, but for a full page in
what's arguably the most important paper in the
world, that sounds kind of cheap. Your instincts
are good. The Washington Post did some digging
and found the standard rate was over $142 ,000.
Whoa. So they got it for less than half price.
That was the accusation. Conservatives went wild.
They said the Times was essentially making an
illegal in -kind campaign contribution by undercharging
them. That the paper was subsidizing the attack.
Exactly. So what was the Times' defense? Did
they have one? Their defense was basically, oops,
our bad. They admitted they made a mistake. They
said they gave MoveOn a standby rate. A standby
rate. Explain that. It's like flying standby
on a plane. You get a really cheap ticket, but
you only get on if there's an empty seat. A standby
ad is a deep discount you get if you tell the
paper, hey, run this whenever you have a blank
page to fill. The catch is you don't get to pick
the day. But MoveOn ran this on September 10,
the exact day Petraeus was testifying. That doesn't
sound very standby. Exactly. The Times gave them
the cheap standby price, but also let them guarantee
the specific, most impactful date. You can't
have both. You can't. So to fix the whole mess,
MoveOn had to cut another check for the difference,
about $77 ,000. A few weeks later. So they paid
full price in the end. But here's the thing.
And we talk about the Streisand effect all the
time. By holding a Senate vote, by making this
front page news, didn't the Senate just give
move on exactly what it wanted? This is the cynical
brilliance of the whole thing. The condemnation
was supposed to shame them. But financially,
it was a bonanza. How much did they make? Our
sources say that in just the four days after
the Senate vote, move on raised one point six
million dollars. One point six million. In four
days, that pays for the ad 20 times over. The
Economist reported they raised half a million
on the day of the vote alone. So while the political
class was condemning them, MoveOn's base was
fired up and opening their wallets. It's like
this weird symbiotic relationship. The Republicans
get a villain, MoveOn gets a fundraising spike,
and the media gets a circus to cover. And even
Rudy Giuliani got in on it. He ran his own counter
ad in The Times. And funnily enough, he demanded
and got that Sam Lowe $65 ,000 rate at first.
He basically said, hey, I want the MoveOn deal.
Of course he did. So that's 2007. The ad runs.
The Senate explodes. Money comes pouring in.
But the story's not over. We have to fast forward
three years to 2010 to get the real punch line.
Right. 2010, the political world has totally
changed. George W. Bush is gone. Barack Obama
is president. And the war in Afghanistan is now
the main focus. What about General Petraeus?
He's still a very big deal. In fact, when General
Stanley McChrystal is forced out, President Obama
needs a new top commander in Afghanistan. And
who does he pick? He picks General David Petraeus.
The very same man. The man move on called General
Petraeus is now the chosen nominee of the president
they support. Which puts move on in a really
awkward position. I mean, they called this guy
a traitor who cooks the books. Do they double
down? They do the opposite. On June 23, 2010,
right after the nomination is announced, MoveOn
quietly erases the general Betray Us webpages.
They just scrubbed it. Completely. Any reference
to the ad, the arguments, the cooking the books
claims, gone. If you click the old link, you
just got a page not found error. That is convenient.
Commentators at the time thought so too. One
writer said it was pretty darn funny just imagining
the group scrambling to their computers to hit
delete the second Obama. made the announcement
it really shows you how situational this kind
of outrage can be doesn't it it really does when
Petraeus was the face of Bush's war he was a
villain when he became Obama's guy the criticism
wasn't just silenced it was deleted so was the
outrage ever about the principle of military
accountability or was it just about which party
was in the White House the scrub Kind of gives
you the answer. It's just the latter for sure.
So let's recap the whole mission here. We've
tracked an ad that accused a general of faking
data with these gruesome details about bullet
wounds. Details that were rejected by fact checkers.
We watched the political class unite to condemn
it while the group behind it just laughed all
the way to the bank. And we saw the finale. where
the supposed traitor becomes the hero nominee,
and the evidence of the attack is just quietly
swept under the digital rug. A perfect storm
of politics, media, and money. It really is.
And makes you wonder about the things we get
outraged about today. That's the thought that
lingers, isn't it? And that's the final thought
I want to leave everyone with. You see things
today that are labeled disgusting or unacceptable.
The whole machine grinds into gear to condemn
them. But if this story is any guide, we have
to ask ourselves, Is this outrage permanent?
Or is it temporary? Right. If the political players
change tomorrow, do we all just hit the delete
key and pretend it never happened? If the player
changes, does the principle remain? In this case,
the answer was a pretty loud no. Something to
think about the next time you see a headline
that makes your blood boil. Thanks for diving
in with us. Thanks for listening. We'll see you
on the next Deep Dive.