Posted on 08/24/2007 8:36:32 AM PDT by RDTF
CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) -- A powerhouse Republican lobbying firm with close ties to the White House has begun a public campaign to undermine the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, CNN has confirmed.
A report by the U.S. intelligence community questions Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ability to govern.
This comes as President Bush is publicly taking great pains to reiterate his support for the embattled Iraqi leader.
Al-Maliki's government has come under sharp criticism and scrutiny from Washington lawmakers and officials, as reflected in Thursday's National Intelligence Estimate.
A senior Bush administration official told CNN the White House is aware of the lobbying campaign by Barbour Griffith & Rogers because the firm is "blasting e-mails all over town" criticizing al-Maliki and promoting the firm's client, former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, as an alternative to al-Maliki.
But the senior administration official insisted that White House officials have "absolutely no involvement" in the campaign to remove al-Maliki, nor have they given it their blessing.
"There's just no connection whatsoever," the official said. "There's absolutely no involvement."
When asked whether the White House will ask the prominent Republican lobbying firm to stop lashing out at al-Maliki, the official said, "I don't rule it out."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
BS. This is probably just another made up story from “unnamed sources”. Just like the NY Times “Bush is going to close Gitmo” or “Bush is going wobbly on Iraq” this is just another PR lie spewed forth by a Politically Corrupted “News” media.
So, who’s paying the high-priced lobbying firm to blast away at al Maliki? Just curious...
Well, Charles Krauthammer just came out and said basically the same thing as this article.
My guess is that Bush has decided to finally try and get rid of Maliki and replace him with Allawi (without necessarily destroying the very weak Iraqi government), who's much more friendly to the U.S. and hostile to Iran.
This is coming from more than one place. I suspect it’s true and Bush is even part of it.
WARNING: SPECULATION - MAY BE FACT-FREE
Reading between the lines...Iraq’s leaders were democratically elected and we cannot demand a change in Prime Ministers...but we can have friends lobby for it while denying any official involvement. Political games that are played all of the time. Of course, the Dims make no such distinction. They will call for the ouster or replacement of a legitimately elected official (like Mrs. Bill Clinton did this week) because it’s expedient, rules be damned.
Hmm...is this like Bill Clinton sending Dick Morris and a group of American political consultants to get Boris Yeltsin elected?
This story could easily be true. In the past, foreign socialists have hired Carville to plot campaign strategery for them, and it is entirely reasonable to suspect that other firms here in the US of all stripes could be hired to work on foreign campaigns.
I also remember Carville going to Israel to help the socialists campaign there a few years ago.
1. this is CNN so it is automatically undermining the WH.
2. Iraq is big boy politics where nations are moved like chesspieces now that Baker and co have essentially taken over. So it IS possible.
3. This could be an intentional “leak” to light a fire under Maliki’s butt to get him to do his job.
I think that even President Bush realizes by now that Maliki is little more than a stooge of Iran, and has little interest in national reconciliation, in spite of the mealy-mouthed rhetoric.
This is all part of the new Democratic media strategy to applaud the surge while saying it is hopeless because of the Iraqi Gov’t.
So you think the Iraqi government is in good shape then?
Morris also worked for Yushchenko during Ukraine’s orange revolution and for Calderon.
Not good. Two days ago he was on TV rebuking the guys calling for Maliki to be gone, saying that “it was not up to us, it is up to the Iraqi people” and that M won a free election. It was a good applause line, but if this is true we are hypocrites.
This whole “Iraqi democracy” thing is such a joke and always was. What with the stupid purple fingers and all. These savages have never had democracy and never will, despite the wet dreams on Wolfowitz et al. We should be doing whatever we can to brutally exterminate any opposition, and get the oil flowing. Anything else is a waste of taxpayer money.
Hillary and the chattering class really have no idea what they are talking about.
that attitude is so 1970’s.
Perhaps the savages in the USSR and behind the Iron Curtain should not bother with a democratic form of governmetn. (/s)
Perhaps it is the fact they are educated but not literate. There is only an information diet of CNN and BBC and all the other pro-socialist anti-freedom media that keep them from seeing their true potential.
Dumping tea in a harbor was silly to some but it did have meaning.
Hmmmmm. Client list is interesting, too.
If the “GOP” and “powerhouse” labels are legitimate, then I would place my bets on them both being related (directly or indirectly) to such idiot GOP “authorities” as James Baker and would not hesitate that just like a lot of Baker’s work of late, Saudi money is involved there somewhere.
Are there legitimate reasons for shaking up the Maliki government? Yes. Is following the reasons and rational from the likes of James Baker and the Saudis one of those reasons? No. Should the motives of anyone following their leads be as suspect as following the leads Iran’s Mullahs? Yes.
There are few “white hats” among major Iraqi leaders right now, and that will probably continue until those local leaders who are building anti-insurgent/militia coalitions at the grass-roots level can get further along in their success and rise to replace the various thugs who took leadership roles in the beginning.
Meanwhile, I think any concerted effort by anyone “outside” Iraq to get one Iraqi leader out of power is in fact doing nothing other than working to help another incompetent and thugish Iraqi “leader”/”group” over some others. All they are doing is the same thing the west has been doing for sixty years across the Middle East - enabling the money-and-arms-buy-power, power grabbing, back and forth that ALL Middle East politics represents, and will continue to be manifest unless the democratic experiment in Iraq is given time to prove to a Middle East population that there is a better way.
It is important that Maliki be supported, not because he is great, or the best but because of the democratic and consensus selection process gives him his office. It is that process, and with as little outside influence as possible, by which Maliki or anyone else should be replaced.
If the “GOP” label of the lobbying group is correct, Bush should publicly acknowledge it and strongly denounce their efforts.
Of course, we should never have held those stupid elections a couple years ago in the first place. We should have given Allawi a free hand to consolidate power and unify the country. It's really too bad that we made an idol out of democracy. Hopefully, we've learned our lesson.
No election in which the political parties have armed militias at their disposal can be considered legitimate.
You can't have a functioning democracy until you have rule of law. Unfortunately, the Neocons are too stupid to understand this, and so they put the cart (elections) before the horse (rule of law). Historians will hold that up as a particularly stunning example of American naivete.
LOL. Yes, a democratic consensus in a system whereby political parties have armed militias at their disposal. How wonderful.
Why do so many conservatives make an idol out of elections?
Well said, and it bears repeating.
You cannot extol the legitimacy of the duly elected Iraqi government on the one hand and then, on the whim of being the occupier, arbitrarily replace a Prime Minister....at least not directly. As for the rule of law who do you think the law is? It is legislated and enforced from the top down but only legitimately with the consent of the governed. To impose democracy without consent is more illegitimate than having political parties with armed militias. Seems to me I remember George Washington, after the fall of Cornwallis, at the head of a large army who wanted him to declare himself king. And his greatness is measured primarily in his opposition to such power.
Yes, I agree. Extoling the Iraqi government was stupid, for it is neither legitimate nor freely elected. No election in which the political parties control armed militias can ever be considered free or legitimate.
Holding those elections was one of the stupidest things we did.
on the whim of being the occupier, arbitrarily replace a Prime Minister....at least not directly.
Yes, I agree. It has to be done in a clandestine, back-handed way so as to maintain plausible deniability. I hope the Bush administration is doing this.
As for the rule of law who do you think the law is?
A condition in which laws are clearly spelled out and applied to everyone by a single authority with a monopoly on the use of force.
A situation in which armed militias carve up the country into fiefdoms into which the law enforcement authorities dare not venture is not characterized by the rule of law.
It is legislated and enforced from the top down but only legitimately with the consent of the governed.
Nope. Rule of law is not dependent on democracy or representation. Plenty of dictatorships had the rule of law. Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, Kamil's Turkey, and post-war South Korea constitute several prominent examples.
History shows that you must have rule of law first before you can have democracy. This comes from the simple fact that rule of law makes it impossible for political factions to resort to armed conflict to acheive their political ends. You cannot have a legitimate democracy when factions can simply ignore the decisions of an elected government or, worse, when they can use force to intimidate voters and or representatives to get the results they want.
To impose democracy without consent is more illegitimate than having political parties with armed militias.
I never suggested we impose democracy. Rather, I suggested that we should have let Allawi impose the rule of law on Iraq. Once the militias were disbanded or brought under the control of the central government, and order was restored, then and only then would it be appropriate to allow elections.
Unfortuantely, we put the cart before the horse, thinking that elections would bring about rule of law. That was really naive and stupid.
Seems to me I remember George Washington, after the fall of Cornwallis, at the head of a large army who wanted him to declare himself king. And his greatness is measured primarily in his opposition to such power.
Our nation already had the rule of law before even the Articles of Confederation were established. There was a long tradition of self-government in the colonies, and the pre-existing colonial structures were able to maintain rule of law both during and after the war of independence.
There was no need for Washington to assume any dictatorial powers, and thankfully, he did not. The situation in Iraq, however, is very different.
I don’t think we disagree on very much here. Unfortunately I have to maintain the facade of actually working and am unable to give this the attention it deserves. Nice talking to you. Cheers!
Did you happen to catch the round table on Special Report this evening? Charles Krauthammer bluntly stated that the war in Iraq can't be won with Alawai as president.
FYI, I don't regard Krauthammer as a neocon.
It's hard to tell what would happen if his government fell, but it's hard to imagine how what replaces it could be any worse that what we have now.
We'll just have to see what happens.
For once, I hope they're right. Iraq isn't, and won't for a long time, be ready for democracy. It needs a dictator to bring order. From what I know of him, Allawi would be an excellent candidate; he could be Iraq's Attaturk.
Unfotunately, I don't think it's going to happen. Bush is too stubborn to abandon his goal of a democratic Iraq.
I would welcome such a change, but I doubt it's going to happen.
“Why do so many conservatives make an idol out of elections?”
And you would prefer to make an “idol” for representative government out of something besides elections?
Actually, it isn't an idol to those folks when Hamas wins. They are hypcritical.
That’s hypocritical
“Actually, it isn’t an idol to those folks when Hamas wins. They are hypcritical.”
There is a problem when there has never been elections and in the case of the Palestinian “territories” Condi was personally warned by the Israelis and Abbas that if Palestinian elections went ahead on the U.S. State Department’s artificial timetable that Hamas would win. She refused to listen, Hamas won and now we are where we are there.
In the case of Iraq, regardless of the difficulties - the military situation on the ground, the insurgents and the militias - there were almost as many possible difficulties for the coalition effort in not having the elections (not being able to create genuine “Iraqi” government military and national police to work with the coalition) in not having the elections for the Constitutional assembly as there were in the fact that many militias and “political” factions were linked.
No its not “hypocritical”.
There needs to be a foundation - organizing time - for the most evenhanded results - within the conditions available. I was not opposed to the elections in the Palestinian territories, nor simply on the question that Hamas might win. My opposition at the time, like Israel’s and Abbas was that some more time was needed for groups other than Hamas to organize and make their case for support. Hamas, because of how it is structured, had a jump, an advantage in local organization. When understood, it was a given, that Hamas was better positioned to get its supporters out to vote for it. But, as we knew then and have seen now, that support was not as deep as the initial vote demonstrated and as the violence between Hamas and the other groups have played out it is clear that Hamas was and is not as popular in the more populace west bank as it is in smaller Gaza. Had there been more time to organize before the elections this would have been more apparent in the election results. This both Abbas and the Israelis knew, and warned us about. It is not a question of not having elections because you won’t like the results, but of looking at the conditions on the ground and asking if the populace is as prepared as conditions can be for having the elections. In the case of the Palestinian territories the conditions were not, and could have, better prepared before the elections were held.
Yeah, but who’s funding Allawi so that he can hire this high-priced outfit to help bring down al Maliki?
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