Quote Of The Day: Well, Last Tuesday Edition

As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness. -- Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa

I read this exquisite piece of insider history, Propaganda Redux from last Tuesday's Opinion Journal, this morning because it was nominated by one of the Watcher's Council as one of the week's best pieces of writing on the Internet. It probably is.

Lt. Gen. Pacepa, a Romanian, remains the highest ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence officer to ever defect to the U.S. His career spanned almost the entire Cold War, and he was a part of the propaganda machine that sought, with considerable success, to turn the world and the American Left against America.

I am not going to do the blog-usual paragraph by paragraph presentation of someone's work with comment; this piece is too important. Instead, I'll give you two paragraphs that will help you see why I feel this way.

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels. For communists, only the leader counted, no matter the country, friend or foe. At home, they deified their own ruler--as to a certain extent still holds true in Russia. Abroad, they asserted that a fish starts smelling from the head, and they did everything in their power to make the head of the Free World stink.

The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman--the leader of the new "occupation power." Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.

These paragraphs recount history from early in Pacepa's career and the column goes right up the rug with President Bush's face on it that visitors must step on to enter Howard Dean's office. Dean has bought the Soviet lie.

Read the piece if you haven't already.