What happens when mockery can’t catch up with reality?
I know we’re all waiting for the big debate tonight. But somehow I missed this article in today’s Post by Dana Milbank and Mike Allen. And it can’t go unremarked upon.
You’ll remember that a few days ago I joked about whether Iyad Allawi was actually part of the Bush campaign or registered as a 527.
When John Kerry took Allawi’s speech to task for presenting an unrealistic view of the situation in Iraq Dick Cheney and the later the president railed against him for disrespecting a prized American ally.
But, like I said, what happens when mockery just can’t keep pace with reality?
It seems they decided not to register him as a 527. According to today’s Post, “the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush’s reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.”
That’s extraordinary. It almost takes your breath away. This whole operation has been saturated in politics from the word go. And the Post piece gives more of the nitty-gritty about Allawi’s speech.
But that’s really all you need to know. It would be pretty dubious to have the White House writing Allawi’s speech. But the Bush campaign itself …
What more can you say about that?
That puts team Kerry in something of a bind (doesn’t it?) if the Bush campaign can send our appointed leader of Iraq up to the Hill to deliver a speech from the Bush campaign and Kerry can’t criticize it? Did the Kerry campaign get to have input on the speech too?
The whole Allawi speech was exactly what the most cynical observer would have figured, a cheap Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign stunt.
I mean, they won’t even go through the motions of avoiding the level of ‘coordination’ that would make this illegal if Allawi were an independent expenditure group in the United States as opposed to a foreign leader.
Our appointed leader of Iraq is working on behalf of the Bush reelection campaign — not figuratively, but literally — which is another reason why, as I’ve stated before, it’s so important for us to democratize Iraq, and quickly. Because once we do, some of them can come back here and re-democratize us.
