The UK Guardian is holy writ for the British Left, which means that its readers are taught, day after day, that the United States — and Tony Blair — are either utterly evil or terminally stupid. There is no way they can be talked out of those delusional beliefs, because their daily paper devotes endless space to slandering this country.

It is classic wall—to—wall propaganda, and it is malicious. The methodology is the classic implied accusation: "When did you stop beating your wife, Mr. Jones?" They are master manipulators.

Every intelligent person in Britain knows that we are in Iraq for precisely the same reason that America came to the aid of a besieged Britain in 1940.  Hitler was a fiercely dangerous aggressor, and so was Saddam, so is Bin Laden, Tehran's Ahmadi—Nezhad and a few other folks around the world. Only the truly self—deluded think otherwise, and they are beyond reason.

At some point, therefore, the civilized world simply must say "Stop!" For that reason and that reason alone, the US and the UK have had extraordinary consistency in their foreign policy since 1914. The War on Terror follows precisely the same logic as the war against the Kaiser, against Hitler, and against Stalin. No one should be surprised.

But Guardian readers cannot be allowed to remember this plain fact.

To keep its readers' anti—American outrage going, The Guardian needs to drop an endless barrage of stinkbombs. These are slanderous lies, simply put.
They imply, without evidence, that the humiliations inflicted on some prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib were official United States policy, rather than the criminal actions of a few soldiers  who had already been charged with crimes under the US Code of Military Justice by the time the so—called "news" hit the paper.

The Abu Ghraib hullaballoo was a smear, using guilt by association. To the Guardian, hundreds of thousands of US military men and women are co—conspirators with the nasty abusers at Abu Ghraib — no matter how noble, self—sacrificing, and decent they are. They are simply smeared.

Well, let's pretend to turn the tables.

A few years ago the body of a young Black boy was found in the Thames, with its head missing, a victim of vicious ritual murder.  The BBC soon reported that "Voodoo killing is practiced in the UK."

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police was quoted as saying that the boy's

"head had been cut off in a particular way, his arms and his legs had also been cut off in a particular way ... We are talking about either witchcraft, ju—ju or voodoo. ... A certain tribe or culture practise sacrifices, mainly animals, where animals are sacrificed in a particular way and then the blood is drunk to give them a certain strength, good health, to give them a certain potency. People will sacrifice anything, including humans. If people feel that human sacrifice is going to be more potent there is a view that the younger the child the stronger the medicine is."

In a moment of bizzare self—parody, the BBC story was sub—headed "Cultural Diversity." Cultural diversity, indeed.

OK, let's try tit for tat:  When did the Guardian's readers stop practicing
voodoo sacrifice of little children?   It's a silly question, because we all
know that millions of Britons don't do that. Yet the Guardian pretends that its readers don't really know that Americans have almost identical moral values.

And yet, we who support the United States and the British Prime Minister have not resorted to smearing millions of good and decent people for the actions of a few propaganda artists. Nor will we. We simply do not engage in guilt by association. However, we pay a price for our decency — we are at a great disadvantage in the propaganda war. We also know full well that our domestic public opinion will decide the outcome of the War on Terror, just as much as our soldiers will, fighting on the sands of Anbar Province.  Yet we tolerate a stream of slander, without responding in kind, because that isn't how we behave.

We must remember, however, that anti—American slander is expertly designed to undermine our morale and self—respect. But to believe the smears, we would also have to believe that our neighbors next door, serving overseas in the US forces, are fools or dupes or criminals. We just don't believe it.

The latest smear is a leaked document alleging that George W. Bush wanted to bomb innocent Al Jazeerah journalists during the battle for Fallujah. Bush supposedly asked Tony Blair whether that was a good idea, early in 2002.
Because top secret documents cannot be published in Britain, the Guardian simply alleges that the written account of the conversation has been suppressed under the Official Secrets Act. Its readers are slyly invited to infer that there must be a guilty secret, since there is a secret at all. Guilt by implication is a sleazy tactic, but nothing is beyond the masters of agitprop.

At some point we must simply stop and ask the Guardian's readers: how the hell indecent do you think we are?  The United States is a daughter of Britain.

We allegedly speak the same language, we read the same books, our system of government is a direct descendant of the political philosophy of John Locke and Edmund Burke, we keep civilian control of the military just as Parliament does, we have a vigorous and independent judiciary, we continue to be fighting allies, and finally — and make no mistake about this, — we train American soldiers rigorously from day one to obey the rules of war, on pain of criminal prosecution, just like British soldiers.

So how has the daily slander machine gotten started? Who do they think we are? And who over there is willing to speak up and tell it like it is?

Oh, and about Al Jazeerah. The Guardian pretends that Al Jazeerah is just an "objective" journalistic outfit — just as objective as the Guardian itself. The fact is that almost like magic, Al Jazeera has managed to get every single propaganda videotape ever made by Osama bin Laden.  Mr. bin Laden, if anyone remembers, ordered the deliberate murder of almost 3,000 innocent Americans four years ago — men, women and children. He is all to happy to order a lot more to get his way, including British citizens in the London Underground.

Al Jazeerah has a straight line to the terrorists who were killing our troops in Fallujah, something that Bush and Blair undoubtedly know from signals intelligence. The political leakers of this story know perfectly well that neither Bush nor Blair can come out in public and talk about about their intellignence sources, for fear of destroying vital sources and methods. Thus Tony Blair and George W. Bush are forced to bite their tongues, while slanderous allegations are simply dumped against them, every single day through the media.  It must feel like a form of psychological torture to be falsely accused of the worst motives day after day. I therefore feel the greatest admiration for Bush and Blair as human beings.

We are lucky to have them as elected leaders in a time of war.

What about the secret leak?  We already know the answer. It is utterly out of character for Americans, and particularly for George W. Bush, to order the bombing of innocent journalists.

The only sensible conclusion, therefore, is that

1. Either Al Jazeerah harbored terrorists in Fallujah, who come under the Geneva Convention as non—uniformed aggressors, willing to murder women and children in cold blood, and are therefore no different from the Nazis or Stalin's mass—murdering Secret Police.

If that is the case, the Guardian is taking sides with those who commit crimes against humanity every day — by truck bombing Shiite mosques with thousands of ordinary people in them.  That puts the Guardian in deliberate collusion against all normal human decency. They might as well be practicing voodoo murder, because the end result is the same.

Or, alternatively,

2. The report is wrong, deliberately misleading, or just misinterpreted. I would guess it's a misinterpretation by a faithful reader of the Guardian.

We know that those folks routinely misinterpret who we are, even though in their hearts they know better. The leakers — insiders in the Labour Party
— no doubt interpreted the Bush—Blair conversation according to their false beliefs. It is a self—fulfilling prophecy.

In a rather similar situation, England's King Edward III famously said:

"Honi soit qui mal y pense," or "Shame on him who thinks evil thereof." He meant "Shame on malicious liars, because they know full well what kind of human being I am."  That became the motto of the Royal Order of the Garter, because the Guardian's tale is not the first political smear campaign in history.

It is interesting to speculate what private conversation took place between Tony Blair and George W. Bush that day. But it isn't really important:  we know their character, just as we know the character of their critics. Take your pick. You know mine.

James Lewis is a frequent contributor.