The Allawi Lobby
Adam posted about the sudden public interest in reaching for a non-democratic solution in Iraq. Presumably, that would entail overthrowing (in some fashion) the current al-Maliki government and replacing it, presumably, with some kind of pro-Western semi-democratic regime under, again presumably, Ayad Allawi. Allawi himself recently took to the editorial pages making some bizarre pronouncements that would seem to indicate he’s amenable to such a course of action.
It turns out that he’s more than amenable, and the recent spat of press coverage suddenly seemingly spontaneously turned on to the idea is, in fact, coordinated. Mr. Allawi, it turns out, in a great piece of reporting by CNN, actually hired the top GOP lobbying firm in the country, founded by former GOP Party Chair and current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and boasting as partners two former high up Bush administration officials–Ambassador Robert Blackwill, the former Deputy National Security Adviser, and Philip Zelikow, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and 9/11 Commission Executive Director–to plaster Allawi’s case all over the country, and to “criticize al-Maliki and promote the firm’s client, former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, as an alternative to the current Iraqi leader.”
Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon, goes a bit deeper down the rabbit hole.
It really is very strange how all of Official Washington, seemingly at the same time, collectively decided to turn on Prime Minister Maliki — who, after all, was elected democratically and was the leader in whom we were placing all of our hopes for progress in Iraq. Obviously, there is a very potent and well-funded effort to induce exactly that policy change at the highest levels of Republican power….
Allawi hires the most powerful GOP firm in the country, with former top Bush officials as partners, and almost immediately, the key Op-Ed pages of our nation’s newspapers open up to him and all of official Washington, beginning with the President, changes course. Suddenly, key figures in both parties begin calling for Maliki to be replaced.
Most extraordinary of all is how deceitful this whole process is.
Check out Greenwald’s whole piece. It’s the Must-Read of the day.
Now that I think about it, if questioning the validity of our strategy in Iraq undermines our mission there, what’s it called when a Republican lobbying firm works tirelessly to stage a coup?
Comment by Brad — 8/25/2007 @ 1:54 am