Senator Alleges White House Wrote Allawi's Speech

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "In a letter to the White House, a leading US Senate Democrat, Diane Feinstein, expressed 'profound dismay' that the White House allegedly wrote a large portion of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's speech to Congress last week. 'His speech gave me hope that reconstruction efforts were proceeding in most of the country and that elections could be held on schedule. To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks.'"

Comments

Al Lorentz

[Anonymous Coward]

Incidentally, Al Lorentz is under the threat of serious jail time for speaking out.

Re:Al Lorentz

[sedna]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/29/milit ary_justice/

Online media, but not a weblog and with sources to follow up on.

Re:Debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you ever stop beating your wife?

Read Senator Kerry's testimony to the Senate from 1971. Read it all. Comprehend. Then form an opinion and speak.

If you can read english, you will see that Kerry was relating details of war crimes related to him by over 100 other men. War crimes that they were coerced and abetted in committing by commanding officers. They knew it was wrong, and they admitted it out of shame, and because they knew that it tarnished the credibility of the United States, which they defended because they loved.

Fast forward 33 years. Location: Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq. Same story. Nothing learned. Our national credibility savaged. Maybe because we have a president who admittedly "doesn't read much".

Re:Give me a break...

[mapmaker]

You may have read the article but you missed the salient point: It wasn't just the US Government that helped write the speech, it was BUSH CAMPAIGN WORKERS. It was a campaign speech disguised as a diplomatic event.

And that makes it all the more repugnant that Bush and Co. have been complaining about Kerry criticizing the speech. Bush has his puppet prime minister give a campaign speech and Kerry isn't allowed to criticize it? Puh-leeze.

Re:Is this news?

[Selanit]

How is Iraq less of a dictatorship today than it was under Saddam Hussein?

Easy: in a dictatorship, someone is in control of the country. In Iraq today, nobody is really in control of the whole country. We have:

1. The interim government, which claims to have control, but hasn't so far been able to reign in the insurgents;
2. The U.S. military, which definitely has control of some portions of the country, especially the "Green Zone" in Baghdad -- but lacks control of other places, eg Fallujah;
3. The British military, which seems to have Basra pretty well in hand, but little influence anywhere else;
4. And the insurgents, who seem to have pretty much free reign over Fallujah and Sadr City (which, if I understand correctly, is a neighborhood of Baghdad). And even if they don't have direct control anywhere else, they're certainly exercising a lot of influence over events all over the place.

In short, no one entity, governmental, military, or otherwise, is calling the shots for the whole country. That doesn't sound like any kind of dictatorship to me -- it sounds more like chaos.

Re:Alternative

[jcr]

Just look at Africa -- after Britain and France pulled out, everything went to straight to hell.

No, depending on where you're talking about, many countries in Africa did fine and dandy for a couple of decades.

-jcr

Re:The U.S. government is building 16 permanent ba

[antiMStroll]

Funny you should mention, I'm not usually a Naomi Klein fan but this one's a must-read:

http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

BS Alert!

[RealProgrammer]

I am not an armchair quarterback. Nor am I some politically idealistic and naÃve young soldier...

Al Lorentz is the former Chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas. He was against the war in Iraq, because Lorentz believes in isolationism (even after 9/11). So while he is not "some politically idealistic and naÃve young soldier", that's only true because he's not young. He is a political ideologue, with an anti-Bush paranoia.

I am an old and seasoned Non-Commissioned Officer with nearly 20 years under my belt. Additionally, I am not just a soldier with a muds-eye view of the war, I am in Civil Affairs and as such, it is my job to be aware of all the events occurring in this country and specifically in my region.

That made my Bullshit Detector go off like a Claymore in a cattle drive.

Al Lorentz spent most of his career in the Reserves.

A noncomm in Civil Affairs doesn't have a "muds-eye view" of the war at all. He may as well be back in Texas, for all the fighting he'll see. This guy is an armchair General. Why isn't he an officer? Because he's incompetent for a commission, that's why.

Al Lorentz was a Bush basher before he went to Iraq, and he's a Bush basher now.

From another article by Lorentz:

Pigeon holing is a mental tool used by the ignorant to help them disregard information, ideas and people whom they are incapable or unwilling to understand. A good example of pigeon holing is to declare flippantly that anyone who believes any sort of conspiracy whatsoever as some sort of kook. Never mind that history is replete with proven conspiracies and that a conspiracy is merely two or more individuals conspiring together for any means.

Allawi

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

In case y'all didn't know, Allawi is also a longtime CIA and Mossad "asset".

Maybe some of the insurgency is inspired by the feeling that the country shouldn't have a U.S./Israeli mole installed as chief executive, no?

War on Terrorism

[microsopht]

2500 people killed in WTC.

Very Sad ,Bad thing to happen

Launch War on Terrorism


Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq 15033
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

plus

Deaths due to kidnapping and beheading of citizens of countries [ some that have noting to do with war ] - Kenya,Egypt,India,Australia,Britain,France..etc etc.

plus death of military persona of USA,Britain and other countries whose soldiers are present in Iraq.

Re:The U.S. government is building 16 permanent ba

[marsonist]

There are more than 16 U.S. Bases in Germany, but does that make it not free? What about Japan, or Kosovo, or Korea... most reasonable people would concider them to be free. Not having permanent bases there after such a large scale change in governments would be short sighted and extremely hurtful to any chance Iraq has of being free of brutal murdering dictators.

Re:Nice moderating there

[lee7guy]

Yes, or maybe BBC News. No registration requiered.

Re:What an amazing sense of compasion!

[kilfarsnar]

" She's dismayed that there are reports of this, that, and the other!"

By reports, she of course meant newspaper reports. You know, the things most of us get our information from. From the Washington Post:

The unusual public-relations effort by the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development comes as details have emerged showing 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. Combined, they indicate that the federal government is working assiduously to improve Americans' opinions about the Iraq conflict -- a key element of Bush's reelection message.

Later in the article:

But administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the prime minister was coached and aided by the U.S. government, its allies and friends of the administration. Among them was Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA who has more recently represented the Bush campaign in media appearances. Senor, who has denied writing the speech, sent Allawi recommended phrases. He also helped Allawi rehearse in New York last week, officials said. Senor declined to comment.

So it seems that it is a bit more than mere suspicion, as you would characterize it. The article makes it pretty clear that Allawi was a mouthpiece for the Bush campaign while he was here in the US. So that's why Ms. Feinstein was dismayed. Frankly, so am I.

The article is here