Demagogue

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked about final preparations for the Iraqi elections. McClellan explained:

We want to do everything we can to help support the Iraqi people as they move forward on holding these elections, and that means making sure there's as secure an environment as possible all across Iraq. And it also means helping the Iraqi Election Commission move forward on setting these elections up, and the preparations that they are taking.

In this article posted today, National Review's Michael Rubin provides more detail as to exactly how U.S. officials are "helping" the Iraqi people with their election:

... more than 200 mostly Shia candidates joined together in the Iraqi National Alliance .... After agreeing on both faction proportions and the relative placement of each member, the Iraqi National Alliance spokesman telephoned the convention center to reserve a room for the press conference.

The Iraqi receptionist passed the call to an American official who explained that room reservations could not be made without (U.S.) embassy approval. After being bounced around the U.S. embassy, a junior officer demanded to know exactly which candidates would speak at the press conference and what they would say before he would sign off on the room request.

The experience left a bad taste in the politicians' mouths not because they are anti-American or pro-Iranian — although some are both — but rather because so many are Iraqi nationalists and took offense at the embassy's attitude.

A member of the Independent Election Commission of Iraq voiced a similar complaint over lunch at his Baghdad home. Junior American diplomats regularly accost him and demand the minutes of meetings; he refuses them on the grounds that the Independent Election Commission is just that. He would no sooner share its private deliberations with the Americans than with the Iranian, Turks, or any Iraqi politician.

If the Americans respected the commission's integrity, they would ask once and respect the answer.