BEYOND BELIEF: I’m going to wait till after next week’s national security debate to make a final assessment of John Kerry on the war, but this statement by Joe Lockhart about Ayad Allawi is just vile:
“The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips.”
This is the same Joe Lockhart who calls nutjobs in Texas at the behest of CBS. Look, Bush’s war-management deserves ferocious criticism, but the notion that Kerry is fit to wage this war is getting more and more untenable as the days go by. He has sent signals that he wants to withdraw troops soon; he disses our allies; he shows contempt for a man risking his life to bring democracy to Iraq. We’re in a war, senator. Fight the enemy, not our friends.
Joe Lockhart’s phone number was given to a nutjob in Texas by CBS (and, I’ll point out, despite all the conspiracymongering, that Lockhart only talked to Burkett long after the documents were given to CBS. Why would he beg CBS for Joe’s phone number if the DNC was behind the memos? This is easily disproven spin.)
Secondly, it’s NOT in Allawi’s best interests to come across as a puppet, to stand next to Bush (who is incredibly unpopular across the entire Muslim world), to bolster his credibility with the Iraqis. And that’s what Lockhart is saying. What he’s getting at (and you can hardly tell given the fact that they take just one sentence of his for the entire article) is that this is Bush calling in a political favor from Allawi for his own campaign. Making Allawi into a Bush partisan is not in Iraq or Allawi’s best interests, especially if he’s trying to gather aid from the rest of the world, or if Kerry wins this election. It makes him look weak and dependant. And it’s disgraceful of the Bush administration to call this in (or even allow it to happen, even if it was Allawi’s idea).
Not to mention how tired and empty the “blame the media” cliches sound, coming from Bush or from Allawi. Oh, those evil TV screens, showing us the violence that’s going on daily. Who are you gonna believe, a man who lives inside an armed compound in Iraq or your lyin’ eyes?