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Through a serendipity I was able just before the Memorial Day Weekend to invite myself to a propaganda offensive against the Iraq war conducted by the anti-American left at Pacific Palisades High School. It was an experience that revealed more than I was happy to know about the state of our public school classrooms.

The in-school event was a production of the Pali Hi English Department whose plan was to corral 300 students for an hour and forty-five minute lecture by an anti-war speaker from "U.S. Tour of Duty" a group that works with Medea Benjamin's Code Pink in active obstruction of America's war effort. The outside organizer was a former member of the Pali Hi English Department named Marcie Winograd, who is president of an organization called "Progressive Democrats" and a member of Palisadians for Peace, an organization composed of what appear to be retired Communist Party members and activists involved in the fellow-traveling left.

I was at the event, which was held during school hours between 10 and 12AM, by happenstance. I had been contacted a week earlier by Jeff Norman, the organizer for U.S. Tour of Duty, who wanted to know if I would debate a former CIA technician named Ray McGovern, who had apparently gone over to the other side. The venue -- a Venice church -- did not appeal to me since I knew the audience would be composed of leftwing activists whom I have reason to know are intolerant, obnoxious and nasty when gathered in a public setting, and can be violent as well. I asked Norman, who was quite accommodating to find another more hospitable venue on the Westside or in the Valley.

McGovern, who resides in Virginia was only in California to visit his son, so there was little flexibility in the time frame. It came down to one or two dates, and Norman was having trouble securing a new venue on such short notice. Then I received an email that Marcie Winograd had sent to McGovern, copying me whether inadvertently or not I do not know. The email referred to another event which she had set up at Palisades High School for a captive audience of high school students.

I knew just what they had in mind, and didn't like it at all. Here I was crusading nationally to take politics out of college classrooms and these leftists were planning an indoctrination session for 13-16 year olds in high school. I sent an email to McGovern (who had appeared as a genial and accommodating fellow in his previous communications to me). I suggested that this would be an acceptable venue from my point of view if he wanted to hold our debate there. McGovern agreed. He even suggested that our encounter should be formulated as a friendly discussion rather than a debate to which I agreed. I proposed that the topic should be "How should we look at the war in Iraq?" Before I heard back from him, I received an email from Marcie Winograd saying she wanted the topic to be: "The U.S. government should rapidly terminate its occupation of Iraq. Agree. Disagree. Qualify."

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