Good for the goose

Allawi group slips cash to reporters:

The electoral group headed by Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, on Monday handed out cash to journalists to ensure coverage of its press conferences in a throwback to Ba'athist-era patronage ahead of parliamentary elections on January 30.

After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most of whom were from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill contained in an envelope.

Hmmm... these Iraqi reporters should come to the U.S.. I hear that our gummint is handing out envelopes to the press with $240,000 in them.

Then there's this pair of gems:

Mr Allawi's list, whose campaign emphasises the rebuilding of the Iraqi military, is playing on its leader's reputation as a strongman and Iraqi yearnings for stability.

Like most candidate groups, Mr Allawi's has not announced its complete list of candidates for security reasons.

So, Allawi is marketing his campaign on the premise that he's a 'strongman'. Isn't that one of the reasons we invaded in the first place? To rid Iraq of its 'strongman' dictator, that the U.S. helped put into power? Secondly, we call this a 'democracy', when 'for security reasons', the electorate does not get to know for whom they are voting? Do they remain annonymous after the elections too so that the insurgents won't kill them at the first opportunity?

Curiouser and curiouser...

Technorati Tags: politics, ethics, bush, iraq