Appeasement: Democrats are calling our victories in the global war on terror defeats. Hysteria like this from an increasingly disloyal opposition is no help in America's long war against a new kind of enemy.

In George Orwell's fictional "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the tyrannical regime of Oceania told its citizens that "war is peace," "freedom is slavery" and "ignorance is strength." Today the Democratic Party could adopt the motto "winning is losing."

This week, Joe Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made a stunning declaration while stumping for president in Iowa: "If anything is shown by the British uncovering the plot on the airliners, it's simple — we are not protected."

You'd think the saving of thousands of lives might warrant a pat on President Bush's back. Instead, Biden claims "we are not safe" and complains about "this administration's refusal to do anything about homeland security."

But there have been no terrorist attacks on the homeland in the five years since 9-11. How much safer can you get than that?

As Vice President Dick Cheney pointed out this week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, terrorists since 9-11 "have successfully carried out attacks in Casablanca, Jakarta, Mombasa, Bali, Riyadh, Baghdad, Istanbul, Madrid, London, Sharm al-Sheikh, Bombay and elsewhere. Here in the U.S., we have not had another 9-11."

Meantime, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's reaction to the foiled airline plot was to issue a statement again complaining that "Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida's mastermind, is still on the loose." But bin Laden might as well be in jail, considering how emasculated he is.

What's more, if Democrats had their way, the most valuable tools that have successfully prevented more than a dozen terrorist operations — like the National Security Agency's surveillance of international telephone calls — would be shut down.

The Bush administration isn't giving its opponents a pass. Also speaking to the VFW, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted that "it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons." He issued a reminder that we face nothing less than "a new type of fascism" in this war.

Let's also not forget that prominent Democrats want us to cut and run in Iraq. The vice president warned that "retreat would convince the terrorists, once again, that free nations will change our policies, forsake our friends and abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with violence and blackmail." Rumsfeld made it clear: "We have only two options in Iraq — victory or defeat."

Sadly, Democrats can't tell the difference, and with a chance to pick up congressional seats, they are stooping to the Orwellian.

Plamegate: Patrick Fitzgerald's three-year manhunt to track down who blew Valerie Plame's CIA "cover" has been exposed as a costly sham. He apparently knew all along that his man was not Scooter Libby.

When Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, was assigned the Plame case, he was hailed as a paragon of integrity. He'd helped convict Mafia boss John Gotti, the 1993 World Trade Center bombers and former Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan, who'll be sentenced next month on 22 counts of bribery and racketeering.

But it's hard to see anything but politics as the motivation for Fitzgerald's handling of the Plame affair. The facts indicate that Fitzgerald knew early on that the original leaker was State Department official Richard Armitage. So why did Fitzgerald let a cloud hang over White House adviser Karl Rove's head for so long? And why is Fitzgerald continuing to hound Libby, the former vice presidential chief of staff?

The answer seems to be that Armitage, who is charged with nothing and brags that he hasn't even consulted a lawyer, was former Secretary of State Colin Powell's right-hand man and a critic of pre-emptive war in Iraq. Libby, on the other hand, was an architect of that war strategy. Do doves get a pass in Fitzgerald's book, while hawks get an indictment?

The latest revelations raise a question of far more gravity: Did Fitzgerald publicly lie? Let's look at the facts:

• The indictment of Libby that Fitzgerald extracted from the grand jury states that "on or about June 23, 2003, Libby met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. . . . In discussing the CIA's handling of Wilson's trip to Niger, Libby informed her that Wilson's wife might work at a bureau of the CIA."

• In the Oct. 28 press conference announcing Libby's indictment, Fitzgerald claimed that "in fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson."

• That assertion is apparently false. A soon-to-be-released book, "Hubris," by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and The Nation magazine's David Corn, finds that Armitage revealed Plame's identity in a meeting with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward a week before the Libby-Miller meeting in June 2003. In a Newsweek preview of the book, Isikoff cites "three government officials, a lawyer familiar with the case and an Armitage confidant" as sources for when the Armitage-Woodward conversation took place.

• Armitage is also clearly columnist Robert Novak's primary source for his July 2003 column, which was the first piece to identify Plame. On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Novak complained that "the time has way passed for my source to identify himself."

• Isikoff notes that "Armitage himself was aggressively investigated" by Fitzgerald. So Armitage fessed up at the outset. Fitzgerald long ago knew whom Armitage talked to and when. And he knew it was Armitage, not Libby, who was responsible for outing Plame (whose status as a secret CIA operative was dubious at best).

• Fitzgerald's contention in October that Libby was "the first official known to have told a reporter . . . about Valerie Wilson" may therefore have been a lie.

Fitzgerald knew in the early days of his politicized witch hunt that no crime was committed. No one intentionally revealed the identity of a truly covert agent. Yet he made a reporter, Miller, spend nearly 90 days in jail for refusing to reveal her source.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald refused to reveal to the public the true source. From top to bottom, this has been one of the most disgraceful abuses of prosecutorial power in this country's history. That it's taking place at a time of war only magnifies its sordidness.

We wouldn't be surprised if Fitzgerald ran for high elective office in the next few years — likely as a Democrat. The Plame case proves he can bend the truth with the proficiency of the slickest of pols.

Media: With the one-year anniversary of Katrina behind us, the media-fed myth that New Orleans was destroyed due to federal negligence has congealed in the public's mind. It's not true.

We're not saying the U.S. government — especially FEMA — covered itself in glory after the hurricane. It didn't, and we're not making excuses.

But there's a big difference between the near-criminal negligence implied by media coverage over the past year and the real story of the effort to clean up and save lives after an unexpected natural disaster.

Looking at the media coverage of the anniversary Tuesday, it seems people are still trying to fix blame.

Appearing on NBC, former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown blamed higher-ups for the inadequate federal response. Specifically, he pointed a finger at President Bush and Michael Chertoff, homeland security chief.

Brown's self-serving comments aren't true. He's the one who headed FEMA — not Bush or Chertoff. His comment that he was "low man on the totem pole" is pathetic. As so many other things said over the past year, it was uttered without the media challenging its veracity. Why? The statement impugned Bush.

That's not surprising. For the media, Katrina always was more about politics and mythmaking than about reporting and telling the truth. Katrina became a part of a long story line spun relentlessly by the press, of White House ineptitude in the face of disaster and lack of concern for the poor.

As part of this, the media got caught up in telling some big fibs or exaggerating some events while ignoring others.

Take the idea that the federal response was "inadequate" or "incompetent." Granted, that might be said of some of FEMA's efforts, which were poor. But a big story that never got told was how heroically the National Guard (and Coast Guard) performed before, during and after the storm, saving tens of thousands of lives. The mainstream media basically ignored this.

As reported, the Guard had 2,500 troops in New Orleans during the hurricane. It pre-positioned thousands of liters of water, ready-to-eat meals and other supplies at the Superdome and around the city. The Guard was ready.

Right after the storm hit, Guard troops embarked on one of the largest relief efforts. It included, as a Guard spokesman put it, "10,244 sorties flown, 88,181 passengers moved, 18,834 cargo tons hauled (and) 17,411 saves (of stranded and endangered victims)" by helicopter.

The Guard had more than 200 boats and 150 copters working. Its makeshift medical center at the Superdome handled 5,000 patients and delivered seven babies.

By some estimates, the Guard saved 50,000 lives — maybe more. If a big deal was made of this, we didn't hear about it. We had to search out this information on blogs and through government Web sites. It should have been splashed across TV screens and the front pages of our nation's media. It was a truly heroic moment.

What did we get instead? A lot of false tales, half-myths, rumors and innuendo retailed as news, including:

• Speculation that 100,000 people would die (actually, about 1,300 did, which is bad enough).

• Rumors of dozens of bodies stacked in freezers, killings and rapes of babies in the Superdome (out of thousands there, just six people died, four of natural causes).

• Reports of people shooting at rescue helicopters (that never happened, the Guard says).

• Stories playing up the racial-victim angle. (As a subsequent study showed, African-Americans had fewer Katrina deaths than other groups, based on population.)

• Repeated claims the federal response was "slow." (As the Gateway Pundit blog noted, "The federal response here was faster than (Hurricane) Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.")

We could go on. Days after Hurricane Katrina, the media got caught up in a frenzy of self-congratulation, lauding themselves for their courage and willingness, as some at the time put it, to "speak truth to power."

The real truth is that Katrina wasn't the media's finest hour. As we've seen with recent Mideast coverage, the media have gotten into the strange habit of distorting the news — like reporting deaths of Hezbollah operatives as "civilians" and faking war photographs.

In this, Katrina was no different. Also, much of the coverage was beamed to international audiences hungry for the anti-American meat they were fed. Is it any wonder polls show us falling in foreign esteem worldwide?

Let's make clear that we're not saying no one deserves blame here. Nor are we suggesting that nothing needs to be done to improve our emergency response.

This disaster, however, was years in the making.

Besides, most people, including the media, felt the Crescent City had survived Katrina. If you recall, it was downgraded to a Category 3 hurricane before it reached shore, then veered away at the last moment, seemingly sparing New Orleans a direct hit.

Instead, the sea surged, the levees broke and a big part of the city was washed away. The inadequate levees had been in place for decades — a failure, to be sure, but one that spanned many years and multiple presidents, mayors, governors and FEMA leaders.

In short, this was an avoidable tragedy. We should learn from it and fix problems. That might not be easy, though, since many in the media treat Katrina not as a chance to improve a vital part of our homeland security, but as another chance to score debating points against the Bush-led GOP in midterm elections.