Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Bush in UK, Blair up creek The country cousin shows up at the castle next week, which raises a question: Why would Blair voluntarily hang an albatross around his own neck?   Inquiring minds want to know!   …No, there is only one beneficiary of this visit and it is the Bush White House. With an election campaign looming, they are anxious to deflect the accusation that Bush is isolated. They want to show he has allies and friends around the world and few play better in the US than Tony Blair, whose American ratings put his home numbers in the shade.   That explains why Bush is keen to be seen with the PM, but not why he might want the full flummery of a state visit. A clue can be found in the text studied more closely than any other by the political operatives in the Bush White House: the campaign to re-elect Ronald Reagan in 1984. That made heavy use of TV footage which cast Reagan as a statesman, at home across the globe. A favourite sequence showed the president and the Queen on horseback in Windsor Great Park during his 1982 visit. The Bush team want some royal shots like that of their own. Apparently they were particularly keen on an open-carriage procession down the Mall, and are said to be disheartened by London's suggestion that that might not be possible due to "security".   One Republican source, close to the White House, has a theory as to why the Queen is such an important catch for the image makers. "Look, Americans don't know shit. They're not going to recognise the prime minister of the Philippines. The only foreign leaders they could pick out are the Queen of England and the Pope - and we've already got those pictures." With the Pontiff in the can, the Queen is the co-star the president needs.…   It seems incredible that the White House could breezily decide to use Britain as a backdrop for a glorified ad campaign - and be granted its wish. The government insists it really wants this visit, that a relationship with the sole superpower cannot be taken for granted, but has to be, in Jack Straw's words, "maintained and nurtured".   But this seems a stretch. If Britain, which continues to lose soldiers in Iraq, and Blair, who has put his entire prime ministership in jeopardy, have not already done enough to maintain and nurture this relationship, then what kind of relationship is this?   I guess they don’t call Blair the “poodle” for nothing! 8:58:49 PM

The “Bush Model” What more need be said… when you’re rating comparisons to Saddam, well it kind of speaks for itself …   "They’ve taken the Bush model and applied it to Baghdad," one correspondent said.   The C.P.A., according to several reporters based in Baghdad—many of whom requested anonymity—has severely limited access to key officials in the provisional government. In an effort to stanch the flow of reporting on small-scale terrorist activity and the resulting injuries to U.S. troops, sources said, morgues and hospitals in Baghdad have become impenetrable to reporters. Reporters have found their access to police stations cut off. When access is granted, reporters said, the C.P.A. often assigns "minders" to accompany them.   Hmmm, didn’t Saddam do what Junior is doing now? And I think the Soviets called such folks commissars – the ideology police   But even the good-news stories the Bush administration has chastised the press for ignoring—reopening schools and hospitals, building power plants and infrastructure and factories—can be hard to get, unless you are content to rely upon a C.P.A.-engineered press junket to do your reporting. Contractors working on rebuilding projects, sources said, have been told not to speak to journalists without prior C.P.A. approval. The same is true for groups like the Army Corps of Engineers.   And the C.P.A. has bypassed the Baghdad bureaus of the major media outlets, pitching stories or interviews directly to local network affiliates stateside, and organizing junkets for editorial writers to show off how very far Iraq has come, leaving major-market newspapers to fight through a web of red tape even to get the news—good or bad—out.   Following a less-than-positive story, reporters often find their phone calls go completely unanswered. There have even been charges that reporters whose work is viewed as unfavorable or unflattering to the ongoing operations in Iraq have been blackballed at the [all too appropriately named] Republican Palace.   "People joke that it’s just like the old days," one Baghdad-based reporter said. The source was remembering what it was like before the C.P.A. started issuing sunny press releases about the minting of new, Saddam-free currency for the country, or opening schools and hospitals that reporters have had difficulty obtaining clearance to visit; before it had established its stronghold in the old Republican Palace on the Tigris, once occupied by Saddam and his sidekick press secretary, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf, known to Americans as Baghdad Bob.   "We saw this kind of treatment [of the press] during Saddam," a correspondent said. "And it makes me sick that my own government is doing it now."   Staffed mostly by young Republican campaigners and former Capitol Hill functionaries with varied levels of experience in the media, the C.P.A., reporters told The Observer, feels more like a public-relations agency for the Bush administration than a field operation for the American press in wartime....   The Bushies thought they could win this the same way they bullied the Democrats and stole Gore’s presidency, through a media campaign designed to make the other guy simply give up through sheer frustration.   Problem is, this time they’re playing against folks who also play for keeps, and not just through the media.   Also don’t miss: Live from Baghdad, fair, balanced and direct, it’s Bush TV.   8:49:36 PM