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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.'"
Is this really news to anyone? I watched only a small clip of the speech and said "Bush's speechwriters wrote that speech.
nobody writes their own speeches all the time any more. There are spin doctors and there are teams of spin doctors. Under Clinton the model was to use competing teams of writers, similar to the model used by TV show Friends I'm told, to come up with the best speech possible.
Having said that, I would have thought his own spin doctors would have written it, not White House staff, but really this idea that Iraq is somehow sovereign and no longer merely existing at the whim of the US is bollocks. The White House is the final authority in Iraq today and will be for many years to come.
Flame away...
I am a leaf on the wind
Why should we be surprised by this? The entire Iraq war has been managed more as a political event than a military action. That this administration, which is profoundly unwilling to consider any views than those expressed in its own talking points, would spoon feed self-serving rhetoric to its hand picked Iraqi puppet shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.
I suspect Senator Finestein's shock is strictly rhetorical. I certainly hope it is.
Stuff that matters?
Where are my Star Wars action figures?
Where are my Natalie Portman pics?
Where are my eye-burning lasers?
Where are my new programming languages?
I want my Slashdot back!
This kinda news, whether true or not, doesn't help Bush kill the rumors that Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi isn't some kind of a puppet. But, hey, we wrote the Japanese constitution and made the Empiror publicly declare he wasn't a god, and that all worked out.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Isn't this the Bush admininstration in a nutshell? If you disagree with us, you are un-American, disloyal, unpatriotic.
That's what America is all about: blindly following our commander-in-chief, not questioning their policies, always agreeing.
Just give me my 12 hours of TV, and my low-carb 2000 calorie retired dairy cow hamburgers, and my gas-guzzling SUVs, and I WILL BE HAPPY.
.. is how the President of any other soverign country would behave if he / she was handed a speech to be read while the invited guest of a foreign country.
Imagine the outcry if Bush or Kerry went to China to address the National People's Congress and was handed a speech and told to read it.
Iraq is not a US, EU or UN state; it is a soverign country.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
I'm glad President Bush has set upon this crusade at taking out our foes one by one, and remaking it in our image. Their dictators fall, and their citizens live in freedom, meanwhile we gain a foothold in another part of the world.
The sad thing is that America's image in the rest of the world is so bad right now, that as a foreigner, I am not entirely sure that this guy is trolling.
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The point isn't that "people dont write their own speeches" the point is that a foreign government's party (the Republicans) wrote a speech for an Iraqi national AND Prime Minister (Allawi) to deliver to the US congress.
That's not "spin" or "status quo" thats outright imperialism.
Because I distinctly saw President Bush take a drink of water while he was speaking.
That's because you weren't watching Karl Rove.
This
I just assumed it would be obvious from the fact that Allawi repeated not one, but almost every catchphrase that Bush throws into all of his speeches on the "war on terror". Anyway, read the speech for yourself and see if it sounds like chunks of it came from the same speechwriters Bush uses. Mind you, I'd expect Allawi to be thankful and congratulatory, since he needs the US's continued commitment right now, but I wouldn't expect his own speechwriters to parrot back Bush's campaign slogans word-for-word.
Anyway, this doesn't come as a surprise to me, it was just much more blatant and obvious than I would have thought possible. Another poster brought up Julius Caesar, who wrote his conquered enemies speeches for them. His long lived and immensely successful successor, Caesar Augustus, was the master of running an authoritarian regime while maintaining all the dressings of the Republic, practically the inventor of political spin and authoritarianism cloaked in democracy.
Unfortunately, the analogies don't end there. Trading freedom for security under authoritarian regimes was practically pioneered by the Romans. If our schoolchildren were forced to read some of the classics, I wonder how different things might be in America today.
Seeing how the comments so far have been moderated, it's quite clear that the moderators are either unaware, or unwilling to be aware of a serious problem in America.
-1 mod for overrated? For posting two editorials critical of the war?
This is a prime example of why America is headed for disaster.
If you're genuinely interested in knowing what's really happening in the world, I would suggest looking beyond CNN, FOX, Wall Street journal and the New York Times. All of America's big media is owned by a very small group with very strong political leanings. When you look to them, you only get one side of the story.
If you want the other side, places like www.cursor.org are a good place to start.
...allegedly wrote...
Is this the part where I get to assume it's already fact?
If you like the Daily Show, you should take a listeng to this FreshAir interview with John Stewart that was broadcast on NPR today.
For the first part of the interview he is trademark Stewart, mixing wise cracks with straight lines just about evenly, but about 15 minutes into the interview it really changes. The interviewer starts talking about the reputation that The Daily Show, the self-described "fake news show" has developed as one of the most perceptive analysts of the current state of American politics. Stewart is quite modest, but displays a marvelous level of understanding of the role of the media in America, and the way that its has abrogated its responsibility to be a skeptical filter and not simply an uncritical platform for the political spin-meister of the moment.
The great irony, of course, is that very few of the talking heads in the "non-fake news" business seem to have this level of understanding of the responsibility they bear.
I dunno -- I would like to think the basic qualifications for "President of the United States of America" would be slightly higher than those for "random Slashdot poster".
It is just me or is slashdot politics sounding awful similar to Democratic Underground.
The shrill nature of the allegations and insinuations are just laughable against President Bush.
My Weblog
"Seeing how the comments so far have been moderated, it's quite clear that the moderators are either unaware, or unwilling to be aware of a serious problem in America."
MOD PARENT UP!!!! Exactly right.
You cannot develop an accurate opinion by listening to the innuendo from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one candidate over another. Remember, the media exists to make money. Unfortunately, we don't have directly supported media, only ad supported media, and advertisers, understandably, are careful not to alienate anyone.
Please don't be intimidated by someone with unspecified objections, or objections that merely try to draw attention away from the major issues. Consider everything in the light of your own experiences and your own extensive investigation.
If you have never read the books about the Bush family and Bush administration, I suggest you do so. If you read the books, you will see that the corruption is far worse than you are being told.
--
Bush: Borrowing money to try to make his administration look good.
Just re-emphasises the fact that the US thinks that it should place it's influence on everything and everybody.
Yeah, because we should be influencing other people to stand for equality, democracy, and civil liberties. Just like we influenced the Afghanis to depose the Taliban, put girls back in school, and allow women to participate in society as something more than property.
Like the way we influenced Japanese to throw away tyrannical rule by despots and adopt a democracy. Just like we convinced the Germans that having a nutjob whacko for a dictator is not a good idea. Just like we influenced the British, Indians, Chinese, and pretty much every other world out there that maybe, just maybe, freedom is a viable alternative to oh, say, injustice, hatred, violence, and tyranny.
Yeah, I think you have a great point here. So many people want to influence the world to do evil, to trade in slaves and blood, to sell out their own countries for a little profit, while the US is standing up for the individuality and freedom and humanity, at the cost of instant gratification.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
As if ANY politician these days (including Diane Feinstein) writes their own speeches, instead of having them "massaged by their campaign operatives"...
No one is complaining that Allawi didn't write his own speech. What they are complaining about is that it was written by Bush's campaign operatives.
Don't you see a difference between Allawi having his speech written by his own, independent speech writers and having it written by Bush campaign operatives? Allawi is supposed to be the leader of a sovereign nation, not a member of the Republican party giving stump speeches to promote Bush's reelection.
Sadly, he's probably not. A sizable portion of the country say such things in all seriousness.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
You make an interesting point, but I believe you're wrong about Germany. The last time Germany was a world leader in science and engineering? Um, how about right now? "Getting lots of attention" was never of much importance to most mature nations, except, oh, maybe the US. Germany makes the best cars in the world, which is a highly visible aspect to their engineering prowess. Also Airbus is whupping Boeing's ass with high tech engineering. In science they have some of the most heavily funded university research programs that exist. Much of this isn't very visible, but maybe it's because they do real science rather than the publicity seeking Studies Of Blinding Obviousness (SOBO(TM)) which is what sadly passes for much of US funded research. Germans also have forward thinking ideas about the environment and equality, etc, which the rest of the world would be a better place for adopting. Your stereotyped view of the country is just that, a stereotype, and unjustified at that. Your view is just as silly as the "you lost the war" and "world cup '66 forever" attitude of some of my countrymen. And they don't have a chimp for president.
The U.S. government is building 16 permanent bases in Iraq. This was mentioned in the debate tonight. They apparently want control over the oil. They apparently care about nothing else. A democratic country is one that has control over its own resources.
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Dear mum,
our flatulant, pompus general lost another battle. This is hopeless. We've lost every battle so far, and General Washington keeps retreating. Will we retreat all the way to the territories? How am I to get back to this fall's harvest if the British burn our fields?
Indeed, the times are grim, and I wonder what is to become of us. All we hear is how things are going well, but all I see is death and retreat.
-----
People on the ground rarely have any idea of what's going on.
It could be filed two years before for all its importance. Not only this report is a lot of "maybe-coulda-woulda", it is also quite silly that otherwise intelligent people are so easilly fooled by all of this Iraq WMD talk. VX is known to be possessed by just about any two-bit country on the planet, including places like Serbia. Anthrax is produced from cow dung. A few nutcases were able to make it in a bathtub in England. Etc. Etc. If Saddam was truly bent on using this (rather awkward and unreliable weapon), he would have done so looong ago. Actually he did in 1980s on the Kurds and probably like every military before him, decided the thing was useless. Did you ever wonder why during WWII noone used chemical weapons on the battlefield? All sides had them. They are just extremely useless things in combat. Additionally, Iraq had no capability to produce nuclear technology in any meaningful way for a foreseeable future due to constant oversight.
Truly frightening bio-weapons are of genetic nature and at this point in time beyond reach of the terrorists. This will unforunately change in not so remote future and because of the nature of the technology they will become the primary, cheap and widely available weapon of unspeakable terror.
Isn't this the Bush admininstration in a nutshell? If you disagree with us, you are un-American, disloyal, unpatriotic.
I'm tired of linking the following quote : People don't want War by Herman Goering . That in a few sentences covers what you have saidQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I hate hitler. If I was to point out some of his crimes would you just brush them off saying I am just some "political ideologue, with an anti-hitler paranoia".
ahhh the sweet irony of you posting that.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
what goddamm difference does it make? vote for the man based on his policies, not on his private life. as al sharpton put it - the government should be able what's happening in the kitchen, not the bedroom. that could be generalised much more broadly to all of politics.
Who, in your opinion, *does* know what's going on in Iraq? Allawi, their new leader, whose speeches are written for him by the White House who chose him for his past CIA work?
All this does is show Allawi to be an American puppet. Which is a conclusion many people, both inside and outside of Iraq, had already come to.
Maybe Lorentz has bashed Bush elsewhere, but that is completely irrelevant. He provides a series of well reasoned arguments, and your response is nothing but ad hominem misdirection -- typically the best that proponents of Bush's war can muster when confronted with the facts in the field instead of mindless ideological fantasies. As for the comment that Lorentz has "spent most of his career in the Reserves", well, the irony, given the military record of the current occupant of the White House who led us into this mess, is palpable.
... we must give them great respect, and curry their favor.
Er, unless they actually help us in Iraq (UK, Australia, etc), or are trying at great personal risk to rebuild a country and hold elections (Allawi). Then we sneer at them and call them Bush puppets.
Who's doing exactly the wrong thing for political purposes, again?
Disobeying is one thing. Speaking your mind in a letter is another. If I am a solider I still have the right to an oppinion.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
There are 35 states with higher tax rates than Mass. Montana is one of them. When you have a bad employee (the President is our employee) you fire them. You don't look at his potential replacement and think, "What if he does a worse job than the current guy?".
I hardly know where to start with this. Ideally it would be "insightful" viewpoints which are modded up as "insightful" independent of their political background. But what makes your post totally silly is that, despite the fact that people say slashdot has liberal leanings, liberals are kept on the defensive. Liberal viewpoints are modded down just for being liberal.
And the rest of what you said is totally inane- it is conservatives, not liberals, who seek to (and frequently manage to) quench "opposing viewpoints".
The republican noise machine's ability to shout louder than anyone else is great for conservative politicians, but it's hurting our country. How is a democracy supposed to adjust to circumstances when the debate is brought to the level of an elementary school playground fight?
I met an informed, reasonable republican on slashdot the other day. I praised him for his character, but in fact I was shocked because usually I only meet people like you, who gloss over reality because they came up with a witty barb to toss at the other party.
You guys are really good at that, credit where credit is due; it's only to bad that you are fucking us all over by removing the substance of the conversation.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
I found this refreshing to Bush's repetative and very non-specific "We're going to win!" over and over with no real substance as far as a clear plan and intelligent resolve. . .
...come on - what did you expect?
No, I'm not just trying to be a tinfoil-hat-carrying left-wing anti-US conspiration theorist - but seriously, have you read a paper the past few years?
How this can be "news" is beyond me. How it ever became "news for nerds" that's a whole other story...
Please, can we go back to Xeon vs. Opteron bashing?
What I perceived from Bush:
1) we are right, therefore we are going to win
2) it doesn't matter if we botched the job with no planning and inadequate support because, uh, we are RIGHT!
3) if we are losing it's only because the enemy is hating us more for being right
4) my administration didn't make any mistakes because I am right
5) if you criticize anything we do, I simply mention that it's a hard job and reinforce the fact that I am doing a hard job, regardless of whether it is the right job
6) if you highlight how bad a job we are doing, you are actually perversely on the terrorists side and the public should discount you because the terrorists want to hear that we are doing a bad job
7) since I don't want them (or you) to hear that, I'll just keep repeating that we are doing the right thing
8) a decisive but WRONG course is much better than any indecisive course
9) but that doesn't matter anyway because...I'm right
On the pro side, Bush did come out I think revealing that, yes, he can remember facts and names. Since the bar is so low, this makes him seem ultra smart.
As far as Kerry he's already fucked himself because his statements have been so easy to spin, he can't dispell the myths around him, and the "debate" format doesn't allow him time to. There were many non-rational things Bush said, or foolish misinterpretations (either intentional or unintentional) by Bush of what Kerry had just said, that Kerry didn't have time to rebut. For instance, Kerry said that the test of whether to go to war is a more "global test" (or "universal test" I forget), namely that you have to be able to say to a soldier's family you did everything you could to avoid it, and Bush either intentionally or unintentionally misinterpreted this and played dumbfounded that Kerry was talking about some "global tests" as if he was talking about some world-wide exam. How can you debate somebody that can't even understand what you are saying? I get the feeling if he had said "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" Bush would have started saying: "what is this guy talking about, 'playing with birds', HEY WE'RE AT WAR!"
sigh.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
If I am a solider I still have the right to an oppinion.
Yes, but you don't necessarily have the right to express that opinion. As it is so eloquently said, "Soldier, you are here to defend democracy, not to practice it."