In a speech to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association yesterday, the president added a new point to his standard remarks about the war in Iraq. Hoping to prove that Iraqis are beginning to see “positive changes,” Bush said, “I want to share with you how two Iraqi bloggers — they have bloggers in Baghdad, just like we’ve got here — ‘Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed. We hope the governments in Baghdad and America do not lose their resolve.'”
Impressive, isn’t it? Two Iraqi bloggers in Baghdad happened to write a post about current conditions in the city that happen to perfectly coincide with the White House’s talking points on the war.
There are, however, a few points the president neglected to mention.
Only hours later did the White House reveal that the bloggers were brothers, Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, and these supposedly little-known average Joes had met Bush in the Oval Office in 2004. They are dentists and write an English-language blog from Baghdad called IraqTheModel.com, also available via Pajamas Media.
The White House admitted that Bush had plundered the lines from an op-ed that the brothers wrote for The Wall Street Journal way back on March 5. The White House couldn’t even get the date right, as it turned out it actually appeared on March 7.
Howard Kurtz interviewed the brothers more than two years ago during their visit to the U.S. and quoted Mohammed Fadhil in a Dec. 20, 2004 column: “Now we want to say in a loud and clear voice that we welcome American troops and consider this a liberation, not an occupation.” Fadhil added: “People outside Iraq are more worried than the Iraqis themselves.”
Kurtz pointed out: “In true Internet fashion, they are already having a war of words with other bloggers who see them as American tools.”
First, I find it rather amusing that the White House is so anxious to find someone with positive comments about conditions in Baghdad that the president is quoting anonymous bloggers.
Second, if Bush is really interested in bloggers in Iraq who aren’t part of Pajamas Media and who aren’t politically connected enough to score a White House visit, there are plenty of alternatives for him to choose from.
Greg Mitchell quotes this one, for example, written three weeks after Bush’s Iraqi dentists, by a correspondent for McClatchy.
The loss of state-supplied electricity has made private generators a necessity. Every 50-100 homes are supplied with power from a generator, situated “around the corner” or “down the road” from where you live. The noise generated by these machines has contaminated our very lives. (Not to mention the smoke and fumes that are killing us).
They supply us with a little power for six hours only, the rest of the day we have to switch on our own tiny house generators, which are just as noisy and smelly. (Those of us that can afford them)
The noise from explosions and fighting and cocky nobodies shooting live ammunition into the air to satisfy their sick inner hunger for power is just the cream topping on the cake.
How to sleep properly? How to work properly? How to study?? How to rest, think and achieve?
This war is cultivating a very resilient strain here in Iraq. Should we be thankful?
And another from the same blog, from the week before:
Every time I tell myself that my next blog will be a pleasant story of days of old, I am confronted with a different story that needs to be told.
A friend of mine called me to tell me the bad news. Her brother had been kidnapped, and the ransom set at $100,000. For any Iraqi, such an amount spells disaster.
Selling all they could sell, the whole extended family pitched in to save the poor man. They told the abductors that they couldn’t manage more than 20,000. Surprisingly, the criminals said “OK, have a woman bring the money to …..”. After leading her on a merry dance, a boy of sixteen or seventeen approached her, took the money and said, “We will contact you”. And that was the last they saw of them.
Will Bunch found a whole series of Baghdad bloggers, none of whom “feel safer about moving in the city now.”
If the president is interested in reading bloggers, there are plenty of non-Pajamas Media options for him to choose from. I suspect, however, none of them stick to the White House’s script.
