Freedom's Watch, a new Republican White House front group begun this summer and  headed by former high level White House officials, claims to be the conservative answer to MoveOn.  While they deny that the organization is an administration front group, its primary donors and  leaders have close ties to the Bush administration. (If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, it is a duck.)

Bradley Blakeman, its president, was the former deputy assistant to Bush and Ari Fleisher, its spokesman, the former White House press secretary.  Its founders are a who's who of Republican conservative Bushite billionaires including Mel Sembler, a controversial Republican donor and friend of Cheney's.

Only when pigs fly can Freedom's Watch compare itself to MoveOn.  Freedom's Watch is funded and backed by Republican billion and gazillionaires while MoveOn is supported by the hard earned donations of millions of working, grassroots Americans.

Freedom's Watch leaders say they "hope to build an active, grass-roots support network. Their definition of "grassroots" are the excessively wealthy few, those misguided folks who expect to become millionaires and billionaires some day, and those pitiful people that Freedom's Watch can bamboozle.

Unlike MoveOn, which communicates factual, substantiated information, Freedom's Watch disseminates disinformation, lies, and more lies.

They will now try and sell Bush's new Iran policy, surgical bombing strikes of Iran, just as they tried to whip up support for Bush's escalation of troops in Iraq.  As Eli Pariser of MoveOn correctly described Freedom's Watch, "....a big neoconservative slush fund....a White House front group.....trying to make a very unpopular position on the war appear more palpable."

Freedom's Watch is the swiftboaters of the 2008 election. When the vigilant vanguard of progressive bloggers warned Kerry and the Democratic Party about the SwiftBoaters, they were ignored until the damage was done. Now this new Republican smear and deception group is in their sights and all Democrats should take note and be prepared to be proactive.