... and apparetly, so do several White House correspondents, if what Milbank writes is true. Milbank, seldom known to pass up a chance at a cheap shot at the administration, takes an especially petty one this morning not at Bush but at Ayad Allawi, claiming that White House correspondents now spend their time searching for the Iraqi PM's speechwriter:

It's a political whodunit: Since Ayad Allawi delivered his address to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, foreign policy devotees have been searching for the ghostwriter of the speech, which sounded curiously familiar to American ears.

The White House denies that anybody in the administration did it. Several of the usual suspects outside the administration, including former White House officials Karen Hughes, Dan Senor and David Frum, have also denied culpability.

Oooh -- they "denied culpability"? It's a cover-up!!

Milbank then goes through an interminable series of quotations from both Allawi's speech and Bush addresses on the White House web site, almost none of which sound very similar except for the facts given in each -- which I guess Milbank would have been happier to see not match up. (In fact, I'm sure of that.) The only pair that sounds alike is the assertion from both that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. Otherwise, the rest of the article is filled with a series of mismatched pairs, like these:

"There are terrorists . . . who seek to make our country the main battleground against freedom, democracy and civilization." -- Allawi

"The killers know that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." -- Bush ...

"I have many friends who were murdered, tortured or raped by the regime of Saddam Hussein. . . . We estimate at least 300,000 in mass graves." -- Allawi

"Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq." -- Bush

If this is the best reporting that Milbank can do, it's time for the Washington Post to assign the "White House Notebook" to a gossip columnist -- well, an admitted gossip columnist -- or put a real reporter in the White House press corps.

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» In this case, there is no man behind the curtain from Irreconcilable Musings
Captain Ed notes that the Washington Post is desparately looking for the man behind the curtain in regards to Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's address to Congress. [Washington Post reporter Dana] Milbank, seldom known to pass up a chance at [Read More]

Tracked on September 28, 2004 9:58 AM