When President Barzani of the Kurdistan regional government came to Washington in October, Bush was anxious to publicly embrace him, show him off to reporters, and post pictures of him on the White House website. When President Talabani was in DC a month prior, the same thing happened.
So, when Ahmad Chalabi — the Iranian spy whom we paid $39 million and originally planned to install as head of Iraq — came to town yesterday as the new Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, the Bush gang offered him the same treatment, right? Not so much.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, once embraced and then shunned by the Bush administration, held talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday but the Pentagon did not allow television cameras to record the event.
He also held a private meeting at the White House with Vice President Dick Cheney after his 45 minutes of talks with Rumsfeld, but Cheney’s office would not provide details.
What’s this, a suddenly shy White House gang? I can’t imagine why. Bush aides are supposed to be masters of stagecraft! Photo-op geniuses!
But as the WaPo’s Dana Milbank noted on MSNBC, this was one event they didn’t know how to spin.
Remember the [false claims about] biological weapons laboratories and restarting the nuclear program. [Chalabi] certainly has a key role in this. He is not exactly getting the full red carpet state dinner treatment here. They spirited him in to talk to the Vice President today without allowing any photos or wouldn’t allow them to go to a stake-out afterwards. They are giving him that treatment, but they don’t want it to be observed.
If a discredited neocon darling visits the White House, and no one’s allowed to see it, does it really cause an embarrassment?
Post Script: By the way, the White House may have cracked down on the cameras yesterday, but there are some pictures that will live on indefinitely.
