Did * aides write Maliki's speech? Snow:"conversations about the speech"

[dajoki]

Slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2146539/

False Consciousness About Iraq
Did the White House write Maliki's speech to Congress?

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, July 26, 2006, at 6:19 PM ET

Two developments on Iraq Wednesday—one mining the depths of cynicism, the other … well, it's unclear just yet.

The unabashedly cynical move was Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's address before a joint session of Congress. Either the address was written by White House handlers (as was a similar oration two years ago by his predecessor, Iyad Allawi) or Maliki has hired speechwriters who know exactly how to say what American legislators want to hear.

<<snip>>

First, Maliki's speech, which he must have read half-ashamed, half-relieved that almost nobody back home would be listening. It was a speech right out of George W. Bush's playbook. It painted the war in Iraq as a struggle between democracy and terrorism. "Iraq is free," he said, "and the terrorists cannot stand this." Those who killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11 are "the same terrorists" as those killing innocent Iraqis today. "Iraqis are your allies in the war on terror," and Iraq is this war's "front line."

He expressed gratitude to Congress for standing with the Iraqi people—a line that drew the loudest and longest of several standing ovations (self-righteousness being the favorite sentiment on Capitol Hill). He described Iraq as a country where people "rely on dialogue to resolve their differences," where "women are equal to men" (in the constitution anyway), and where he plans very soon to establish a free-market economy and to loosen restrictions on foreign investment. These fairy tales, too, triggered what the transcripts of speeches before the Soviet Union's Central Committee used to call "stormy applause."

Maliki gave not a hint that most of the violence gripping Iraq these days has nothing to do with al-Qaida-type terrorism—and everything to do with sectarian conflicts, if not outright civil war, between and among the native Sunni and Shiite Arabs.

Did Bush aides write the speech? White House spokesman Tony Snow said at his daily press conference that there had been "conversations about the speech" ahead of time—from which one could reasonably infer that they engaged, at least, in heavy editing.

[Olney Blue]

1. They "translated" it for him.

[dajoki]

2. Translated?

[Stinky The Clown]

3. I'd like to see an English translation of an Arab media report of it com-

-pared to an American media's translation of it to English.

I'd bet damned near anything they differ dramatically.