I have great regard for the Kurds of northern Iraq (go here to read my Turkey-Iraq travelogue from last year). For a long time, the Kurdish authorities have been forced to grab support wherever they can get it — from Iran and Israel, for instance, in different circumstances and for different reasons. You’ve heard it before: politics makes for strange bedfellows.
But this piece by the investigative reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran really disturbed me. It delves into the Kurds’ lobbying efforts in Washington, what Chandrasekaran calls “an influence-buying campaign.” It turns out that the slick PR drive called “The Other Iraq” — which I mentioned in this post — was put together by an evangelical Christian named Bill Garaway, who has hired the consulting firm Russo Marsh & Rogers to place a series of high-profile TV ads. According to Chandrasekaran, “The firm is closely affiliated with Move America Forward, a conservative advocacy group that has organized rallies in support of continuing military operations in Iraq.”
Move America Forward is Melanie Morgan’s organization. I wrote about Ms. Morgan, an unhinged character with politics to the right of Rush Limbaugh’s, just the other day.
It’s no secret that Jalal Talabani and other Kurdish officials are dead-set against any American troop withdrawal and are largely uncritical of our miserable excuse for a president. It’s objectively true that they’ve benefited from this war, at least in the short term. One can understand the logic of their position, given what they endured during the Saddam Hussein years. But how disheartening to read of their marriage of convenience with the looniest of the loony on the American right.
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