NEWS ANALYSIS
In prime minister, presidential race gets a touchstoneWASHINGTON -- Apart from the heavy Iraqi accent, he sounded almost like a Republican official introducing President Bush at a campaign stop. But as interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq toured the diplomatic circuit in Washington yesterday, praising Bush for ''standing firm" in the war on terror and admonishing Senator John F. Kerry as a ''doubter," he took on a far more significant role in the presidential campaign than any American partisan ever could.
''When political leaders sound the sirens of defeatism in the face of terrorism," Allawi said, standing next to Bush in the White House Rose Garden, ''it only encourages more violence." With that remark, Allawi, the former CIA operative installed in June at the helm in Iraq, became the face of the Bush administration's aspirations for Iraq, and a symbol of freedom that Democrats may attack at their peril. The prime minister presented an especially thorny dilemma for Kerry, who has built the final phase of his campaign around the notion that the violent upheaval in Iraq is exacerbated by errant US policies. But Kerry did not shy away from challenging Allawi, saying the Iraqi leader was simply putting the ''best face" possible on the situation -- a critique supported by continued images of violence on the ground in Iraq, where two Americans were beheaded this week, and by remarks from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said yesterday that full-scale elections might not be possible in Iraq in January as Allawi promised. Kerry's decision to dispute Allawi triggered a fierce new round in the debate over Iraq itself, landing the interim leader squarely in the most heated fight of the presidential race. Vice President Dick Cheney came out swinging, lambasting Kerry for attacking a new friend to the United States. And some Democrats -- who asserted that Bush had brought out Allawi as a political prop -- voiced concerns it would be as difficult for Kerry to confront an interim Iraqi leader as a sitting American president. Still, Democrats did their best to portray Allawi as a biased source. Senator Mark Dayton, Democrat of Minnesota, called the speech ''more window dressing from the Bush campaign." Another prominent Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ''the timing of the event and the way they've played it is clearly intended to vindicate or otherwise promote President Bush's Iraq policy. That is one of the inherent advantages of incumbency." After Allawi spoke, some other Democrats grumbled that the speech sounded like a Bush administration text. ''Some remarked that it sounded like the State Department wrote his speech," Representative Jim Moran, Democrat of Virginia, said. Moran grudgingly described Allawi as ''as good an instrument of stability as we could come up with" to run Iraq. Kerry, campaigning in Ohio, took issue with Allawi almost immediately after the Iraqi leader addressed Congress. ''I think the prime minister is obviously contradicting his statement of a few days ago, where he said the terrorists are pouring into the country," Kerry said. ''The prime minister and the president are here, obviously, to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations, and the troops, all tell a different story." By the end of the day, Democratic attacks had grown loud enough to force Allawi to deny that he was campaigning on behalf of President Bush, telling a reporter at a Council on Foreign Relations speech last night: ''I am a tool of nobody." Still, it was unclear whether anyone outside political circles would notice how heavily Allawi appeared to have borrowed from the Bush playbook. Although Allawi echoed Bush almost verbatim, especially as he argued Iraq is part of the broader struggle in the war on terrorism, Republicans said the Iraqi leader only added credibility to the Bush outlook. Bush, in his most vivid response so far to Kerry's contention that the president is ignoring reality in Iraq, pointed to Allawi as the clearest evidence of all that the Democratic nominee was wrong. ''Reality is right here in the form of the prime minister," the president said. And if the Allawi speech was not actually written by the Bush team, it was soon incorporated into the Republican message. By the time Cheney appeared at a campaign rally in St. Joseph, Mo., yesterday afternoon, Allawi -- and the dispute with Kerry over conditions in Iraq -- had already become a part of the vice president's remarks. ''I must say I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Senator Kerry showed for this man of courage," Cheney said, drawing boos from the audience, ''when he rushed to hold a press conference and attack the prime minister, a man America must stand beside to defeat the terrorists. ''John Kerry is trying to tear down all the good that has been accomplished," he said.
Farah Stockman and Glen Johnson of the Globe staff contributed to this report. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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