So this is the man that kerry and the dems call a puppet

[dude1394]

No class at all.

rogerlsimon

Profiles in Courage - The Sequel

I can understand why Instapundit has his suspicions about the bizarre behavior of the Kerry campaign in reaction to Iraqi interim PM Allawi's visit to Washington - dissing an ally during war, etc.

I think that statements like this are more evidence that the Kerry campaign -- or at least the Clinton folks running it -- expects to lose. Hence, they don't have to worry about who they'll be working with, but they want to fire up the anti-Bush base. That doesn't make it any less disgraceful to be going around uttering comments that might as well be designed to undermine America's alliances, of course. This sort of stuff is appalling.

It certainly is, but I think it's more a product of "Hail Mary" desperation than a conscious desire to bring out the base. The isolationist anti-war left, noisy as they are, do not constitute a large enough minority to be useful in that regard. Bad strategy all around. It might even be a turnoff, because it leaves us with these Profiles in Courage to compare:

[Mavdog]

It's not like Kerry uttered anything that could be seen as "designed to undermine America's alliances", nor did he call the PM of Iraq any names. To say that Allawi "put the best face" on the situation in Iraq is truly a non-event.
He certainly never called into question Allawi's character or his bravery, something this writer clearly does with Kerry.
I wonder if this author has ever been involved in combat like Kerry has?
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Kerry: Allawi's take on Iraq unrealistic

By NEDRA PICKLER

Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Thursday that Iraq's Ayad Allawi was sent before Congress to put the "best face" on a Bush administration policy that has gone wrong.

Shortly after Allawi, the interim government's prime minister, gave a rosy portrayal of progress toward peace in Iraq, Kerry said the assessment contradicted Allawi's own statements as well as the reality on the ground.

"I think the prime minister is obviously contradicting his own statement of a few days ago, where he said the terrorists are pouring into the country," Kerry said. "The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story."

Kerry was referring to comments Allawi made Sunday on ABC's "This Week." But Allawi also expressed optimism about the mission in that appearance.

"Foreign terrorists are still pouring in, and they're trying to inflict damage on Iraq to undermine Iraq and to undermine the process, democratic process in Iraq, and, indeed, this is their last stand," Allawi said. "So they are putting a very severe fight on Iraq. We are winning. We will continue to win. We are going to prevail."

Allawi told a joint meeting of Congress Thursday that democratic elections will take place in Iraq in January as scheduled, but Kerry said that was unrealistic.

"The United States and the Iraqis have retreated from whole areas of Iraq," Kerry told reporters outside a Columbus firehouse. "There are no-go zones in Iraq today. You can't hold an election in a no-go zone."

Kerry said Bush should convene a summit of international leaders to ask for their help in Iraq. He also said the president missed an opportunity to get foreign support during two days of diplomacy at the United Nations this week.

"The president skedaddled out of New York so quickly he barely had time to talk to any leaders," Kerry said.

The Democrat's campaign also rolled out a new television ad that says while Bush "keeps telling us things are getting better in Iraq ... the facts tell a different story." "Terrorists are pouring into the country. Attacks on U.S. forces are increasing every month. A thousand American soldiers have died," the ad says.

Kerry's remarks and the ad came one day after he told The Associated Press that Bush's statement that a "handful" of people were willing to kill to stop progress in Iraq was a blunder that showed he was avoiding reality.

"George Bush retreated from Fallujah and other communities in Iraq which are now overrun with terrorists and threaten our troops," Kerry said in the brief interview Wednesday. "And even today, he blundered again saying there are only a handful of terrorists in Iraq. I think he's living in a make believe world."

Bush, campaigning in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, said: "It's hard to help a country go from tyranny to elections to peace when there are a handful of people who are willing to kill in order to stop the process. And that's what you're seeing on the TV screens."

Asked about the "handful" remark on Thursday, Bush said, "My point is that a few people, relative to the whole, are trying to stop the march of freedom." He said, "Look, I'm fully aware we're fighting former Baathists and Zarqawi network people. But by far the vast majority of people, among 25 million people, want to live in freedom."

Kerry's voice was scratchy and breaking from a cold on Wednesday. He canceled most public events for Thursday in Columbus and in Iowa to rest his voice, though his words were clear at the firehouse. The campaign said running mate John Edwards would take Kerry's place in Iowa.

Kerry spoke to the AP in West Palm Beach, Fla., shortly before boarding a flight to Columbus and after Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a scathing attack on the Democrat. Speaking to reporters after meeting with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, Cheney argued that Kerry has a penchant for wavering that makes him a weak alternative to a "steadfast leader, which is exactly what we have in President George W. Bush."

[dude1394]

I guess we should be grateful that he didn't call Allawi one of the "bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted"

Edit: Added the exact quote and I had inadvertantly left out the bought and extorted.

[Mavdog]

or a "puppet" either...

[dude1394]

Man that Mark Steyn has a pen like a stilleto...

steyn
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In this respect, John Kerry isn't exactly the best advertisement for his Swiss finishing school. Forget the impeccable carriage -- if you imagine you're watching streaming video on a slow dial-up connection, his gait seems perfectly natural. But the manners thing seems to have passed him by entirely. His decision to break the time-honored tradition of keeping out of the way during the other guy's convention by rushing on the air within an hour of President Bush's speech to give an instant response was boorish and petty. But, given that his ''midnight rambler'' routine in Ohio was a disaster, there didn't seem much point dwelling on it.

But last week he did it again. Ayad Allawi, the first prime minister of post-Saddam Iraq, was in Washington to give a joint address to Congress. A tough, stocky, bullet-headed optimist, Iraq's interim leader delivered a simple, elegant and moving speech, which made three basic points:

''First, we are succeeding in Iraq. [Applause] It's a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding . . .

''The second message is quite simple and one that I would like to deliver directly from my people to yours: Thank you, America [Applause] . . .

''Third, I stand here today as the prime minister of a country emerging finally from dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption and greed . . . Well over a million Iraqis were murdered or are missing . . .''

Kerry didn't show up for Allawi's visit to Washington -- he was in Ohio again, which is evidently becoming the proverbial Vietnam-type quagmire for him. Nonetheless, barely had the prime minister finished than the absentee senator did a daytime version of his midnight ramble and barged his way onto the air to insist that he knew better than Iraq's head of government what was going on in the country. One question from his accompanying press corps was especially choice:

''Prime Minister Allawi told Congress today that democracy was taking hold in Iraq and that the terrorists there were on the defensive. Is he living in the same fantasyland as the president?''

It would be nice to think this was a somewhat crude attempt at irony, but given America's Ratherized media this seems unlikely. Just for the record, Allawi is not living in a fantasyland. He's living in Iraq, and he begins his day with a dangerous commute across Baghdad's ''Green Zone.'' John Kerry's regular commute, by contrast, is from his wife's beach compound at Nantucket to his wife's 15th century English barn reconstructed as a ski lodge in Idaho. Nonetheless, he's the expert on Iraq and the guy living there 24/7 is the fantasist, and he's happy to assure us the prime minister doesn't know what he's talking about. It's all going to hell, forget about those January elections, etc.

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of adversarial politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush his opponent. But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the field, to put himself on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people. Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this pampered cipher has floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his candidacy other than his indestructible belief in his own indispensability, Kerry finds himself a month before the election with no platform to run on other than American defeat. He has decided to co-opt the jihadist death-cult, the Baathist dead-enders, the suicide bombers and other misfits and run as the candidate of American failure. This would be shameful if he weren't so laughably inept at it.

[dude1394]

This blogger thinks the allawi takedown was actually a jui-jitsu move that kerry fell-for. Interesting.

--------
althouse
Kerry's final mistake.
Here's what I'd like to read about the 2004 election: an analysis of what happened written ten years from now. Anything written today is part of the events themselves. Writing today, you're caught up in the event of the moment. I feel I've been remiss in not yet posting a condemnation of the Republican's ban-the-Bible letter. Writing today, you're influenced by a hope or fear of affecting the events. And you also don't know how things will turn out. You don't know who will win the election, whether some dramatic event will occur in October, and how the war in Iraq will play out.

I try to imagine how someone looking back on the election will analyze it. If Kerry loses, one question will be, what was the turning point? Did the Swift Boat ads set the campaign on a track that led to defeat, was it Kerry's own choice to make his Vietnam service the central argument that he should be President, or was it a mass delusion--Kerry is electable--that overtook voters back in the primaries? Another question will be: When could Kerry have done something to salvage his candidacy? And: What was the final, fatal mistake?

I'm writing today, so I have all the deficiencies of a person writing today, but I have a prediction of the answer to that last question. The final, fatal mistake was criticizing and contradicting Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi when he was visiting the U.S. Kerry is in a very difficult position needing to criticize Bush's handling of the war, because the criticism itself seems damaging to the war effort. Bringing Allawi to the U.S. and linking him to the Bush campaign message was a powerful political move by Bush, but it was not a checkmate. Yet it forced Kerry into a terrible blunder. The grisly takedown has begun:

BUSH: This brave man came to our country to talk about how he's risking his life for a free Iraq, which helps America. And Sen. Kerry held a press conference and questioned Mr. Allawi's credibility. You can't lead this country if your ally in Iraq feels like you question his credibility.

CHENEY: I must say I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Sen. Kerry showed for this man of courage. Ayad Allawi is our ally. He stands beside us in the war against terror. John Kerry is trying to tear him down and to trash all the good that has been accomplished, and his words are destructive."


And the Kerry campaign is now wasting a lot of breath pointing out that it is an election year and the President's conduct of the war must be open to criticism, but what can be said of the attack on Allawi? Kerry will never dig himself out of this one, I think. And any time he makes his old favorite argument that he is much better suited for interaction with our allies, his Allawi blunder will be thrown in his face.

[dude1394]

iraqthemodels take on allawis speech

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I didn’t want to comment on Bush and Allawi’s speech in the congress because I don’t like to praise politicians generally and I thought from what I read that most people liked the speech just as I did, but when I read stuff like this I just can’t remain silent.

Bush was telling the exact truth about the electricity, while what Allawi said about security cannot be proved or contradicted that easily. Still there’s a lot of truth in his statement, and I mean when was the last time you heard in the news about Duhok, Samawa, Diwanyia, Kerbela, Irbil, Ammarah, Kut, Hilla and generally governerates out of the so-called Sunni triangle? Even in that area it’s not as gloomy as it’s portrayed by the MSM, as there are of course few towns that suffer terrible security situation, but even in governerates like Anbar, have you heard the words Rawa, Haditha, Ana, Rutba or Heet lately? Well these are all large cities in Anbar that seem to be not having any serious problems regarding security otherwise we’d hear them mentioned at least once a week as the MSM is not missing to report even ordinary crimes that have no political meaning what so ever! Still Allawi wasn’t painting a rosy picture, as he made it clear that the task is a very difficult one and Iraq need all the help she can get to succeed in it.

Allawi’s speech was articulate, impressive and honest and most Iraqis I talked to lately share the same opinion with me, but much more impressive was the reaction of all members of the congress who were there. That was the American people there, the whole American nation not just republicans, standing and cheering not Allawi but what he stood for; IRAQ. They were showing support and friendship to Iraq not Allawi and that was a rare moment in history where the two nations Iraq and America stood as equal friends, no actually it was more like family as one American friend described. Insulting Allawi and Bush and the whole speech, speaking so harshly of that unique moment is an insult not to Bush or Allawi but to both the Iraqi and American nations, and yes that goes for everyone did that.

Riverbend is disgusted with Allawi’s 9 “thank you” to America, and I want to say that you and I should thank God and America 9 million times and we would still be in debt. Just think whether you could’ve happened to you had you posted similar thoughts about any Iraq politician before the war. Oh but you weren’t posting before the war, nor did any other Iraqi, and I wonder why!

I’ll never stop telling what I believe is the truth and won’t stop fighting for that regardless of all the silly accusations and even threats sometimes. I’m not pro-Bush and I’m not pro-Allawi but I stand firmly with the new Iraq and with America. Iraq has run out of “historical leaders” and I guess there must be some people who still miss that time but they shouldn’t feel that bitter, as one can always visit one of our brother Arab and Muslim nations to remember the “good old days” that we, the vast majority of Iraqis are ready to give our lives to make sure they won’t be repeated.