Keeping Our Eye on the Ball

Iyad Allawi is still making his power move ...

Between Allawi's column in the Washington Post and his much hyped interview on CNN this weekend it is fairly clear that there was a broad public relations campaign element that was arranged by BGR to correspond with the more personal Washington lobbying effort.

But that PR effort has hit a brick wall in a news cycle that is being dominated by the Alberto Gonzales resignation and a Senator in a sex scandal (seriously, on a normal week, all people would be talking about would be the attempted suicide of a certain movie star). So while the media combs over every public bathroom between Boise and Boston, I'd imagine that Allawi's handlers will focus on the behind the scenes machinations of returning their client to power, holding off until the Petraeus report comes out in few weeks.

Meanwhile, in an entirely unrelated development (wink, wink, nudge nudge), the American Enterprise Institute will be beating the Iran drums during the lead up to the report's release:

The chronological juxtaposition of the Surge panel September 6 and the roll-out of Ledeen’s book September 10 underlines the balance that AEI and other hawks (including the vice president’s office) are trying to achieve between their two top priorities at the moment – sustaining the Surge well into next year and rallying Congress and the public behind an attack on Iraq [sic. - I think Lobe means Iran here -JB] before the end of Bush’s term, if by then “diplomacy” does not achieve the desired results of 1) freezing its nuclear program and/or 2) halting Tehran’s support for its Shi’a allies (including the Maliki government) in Iraq.

Allawi and his hired guns seem to be banking on building the perception that by putting their man back in power the administration will be able to accomplish #2.

In case you missed it, here's Allawi's performance last Sunday on CNN. You have to admit, that he's getting his money's worth just in the "non-denial denial" training alone.