By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006; 7:28 AM

Some Democratic lawmakers are lambasting the Iraqi PM for criticizing Israel. Howard Dean has gone so far as to call him an anti-Semite.

I'm far from thrilled with Nouri al-Maliki's comments, but I think we have to keep two things in mind:

One, the Iraqis picked him as the head of their elected government, and he's not going to agree with the U.S. on everything.

Two, al-Maliki has his own domestic pressures to deal with as he tries to hold that government together, and chastising Israel may be the Baghdad version of playing to the base.

Here's what Dean said: "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah."

But that raises an interesting dilemma. If this bloody and costly war was about making democracy possible in the Middle East, as President Bush contends, then doesn't Iraq get to pick its own leaders? And if that's the case, how can we use their positions, however abhorrent, as an argument against the war? If al-Maliki suddenly took a pro-Israel stance, wouldn't much of his country view his as an American puppet?

I'm much more concerned about the Iraqi speaker objecting to the presence of U.S. troops that is, most likely, preventing utter anarchy in that country. If the duly elected leaders don't want us there, that strengthens the case of those who say we should pick up our marbles and leave rather than sacrificing more Americans in this sectarian violence.

OpinionJournal's James Taranto looks at the record:

"Well, what exactly did al-Maliki say? Here are some quotes:

"'We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression.'

"'[Israel's] excessive use of force is to be condemned.'

"'What is happening is an operation of mass destruction and mass punishment and an operation using great force that Israel has--and Lebanon does not.'

"'While Israel has stated its military objective is to hit Hezbollah's infrastructure and physical strength, it has, in the words of the Lebanese prime minister, torn the country to shreds.'

"In fairness to al-Maliki, we should note that he didn't say all these things. Only the first and third quotes are from him; the second and fourth are from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. We'll agree with Reid, Schumer and Durbin, then, that al-Maliki is as bad as Annan, and we look forward to their condemnation of Annan."

Tricky but effective.

DLCer Marshall Wittmann uses his Bull Moose column for a little history lesson:

"Some Members of Congress have protested Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki's address to a joint session of Congress because he criticized Israel and refused to condemn Hezbollah. The Moose shares their frustration, but notes that it is better that this Iraqi leader is hurling verbal missiles instead of real ones.

"A recent Iraqi leader launched real, deadly missiles against Israel. An earlier ruler of Iraq paid the families of suicide bombers a princely sum after their relatives strapped explosives to their bodies and killed and mutilated Israelis. Perhaps, these Congressmen who lament the words of the new Iraqi leader, will now celebrate the fact that Saddam is behind bars instead of issuing verbal orders to kill Israelis and slaughter his own people.

"The Moose harbors no illusions about a dramatic transformation of Muslim attitudes toward the Jewish state. But, it is a dramatic improvement when words cannot kill."

In Slate, Fred Kaplan objects to the PM's rhetoric on very different grounds:

"The unabashedly cynical move was Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's address before a joint session of Congress. Either the address was written by White House handlers (as was a similar oration two years ago by his predecessor, Iyad Allawi) or Maliki has hired speechwriters who know exactly how to say what American legislators want to hear...

"First, Maliki's speech, which he must have read half-ashamed, half-relieved that almost nobody back home would be listening. It was a speech right out of George W. Bush's playbook. It painted the war in Iraq as a struggle between democracy and terrorism. "Iraq is free," he said, 'and the terrorists cannot stand this.' Those who killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11 are 'the same terrorists' as those killing innocent Iraqis today. 'Iraqis are your allies in the war on terror,' and Iraq is this war's 'front line' . . .

"He described Iraq as a country where people 'rely on dialogue to resolve their differences,' where 'women are equal to men' (in the constitution anyway), and where he plans very soon to establish a free-market economy and to loosen restrictions on foreign investment. These fairy tales, too, triggered what the transcripts of speeches before the Soviet Union's Central Committee used to call 'stormy applause.'

"Maliki gave not a hint that most of the violence gripping Iraq these days has nothing to do with al-Qaida-type terrorism--and everything to do with sectarian conflicts, if not outright civil war, between and among the native Sunni and Shiite Arabs.

"Did Bush aides write the speech? White House spokesman Tony Snow said at his daily press conference that there had been 'conversations about the speech' ahead of time--from which one could reasonably infer that they engaged, at least, in heavy editing."

What's more telling, as a measure of Bush's political standing, is what conservatives are saying these days. Take, for example, National Review's David Frum :

"Hands up, everybody who believes that the 'hundreds' of troops that the Pentagon plans to move from the rest of Iraq into Baghdad will suffice to secure the capital against the sectarian militias now waging war upon the civilian populations of the city? Anybody? No, I didn't think so.

"To take back the capital from the militias that now terrorize it will take thousands, not hundreds, of American plus tens of thousands of Iraqis. No sector in Iraq can spare the loss of so many forces (our current troubles in Anbar date back to the decision in 2004 to shift troops from Anbar to the siege of Fallujah -- when they returned, they discovered that every pro-US informant and ally in the province had been murdered, usually horribly and publicly). So a real plan for success in Baghdad will have to be built upon additional troops from out of area, potentially raising US troop levels back up to the 150,000 or so of late 2005.

"Manifestly, neither the administration nor the Congress will contemplate such a move. Which means, most likely, continuing violence in Iraq and a continuing rise in the power of the militias, especially the Iranian-backed Shiite militias: the Hezbollah of Iraq."

Peggy Noonan comes out and says that people have lost confidence in the president:

"Republicans hearken back to Reagan for two big reasons. The first is that they agreed with what he did. The second is that they believe he was a very fine man. This is not now how they feel about Mr. Bush, at least if my interactions with strangers and party members the past year are a judge. They think Mr. Bush is a good man--that he's got guts and resolve, that he can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. But they are no longer confident about what he does. They're no longer fully comfortable in their judgment of his policies and actions, or the root thoughts behind them. It gives Reagan an even rosier glow, for he was the last national political figure to fully win their minds and hearts.

"William F. Buckley this week said words that, if you follow his columns, were not surprising. And yet coming from the man who co-fathered the modern conservative movement, carrying the intellectual heft as Reagan carried the political heft, the observation that President Bush is not, philosophically, a conservative, had the power to make one sit up and take notice."

Hezbollah keeps firing rockets at Israeli civilians--and is getting more popular?

"At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight," says the NYT .

"Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for 15 days, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements."

Is there a silver lining for the White House in the Mideast war? Dick Polman finds one:

"In domestic political terms, Bush should be downright grateful that the press coverage these days is being dominated by the Israel-Hezbollah fighting, which has pushed Iraq off page one. I would bet that relatively few Americans are aware that far more Iraqi civilians have been killed (roughly 1400) during the past two weeks in their increasingly sectarian war than in the hostilities further west.

"As veteran political analyst Larry Sabato emailed, 'The near black-out of news on Iraq can only help the White House. Were it not for the bombs falling on Beirut and the rockets raining down on Haifa, the nearly unprecedented carnage throughout the blood-soaked nation of Iraq would surely be leading the news. Bush owns Iraq, and GOP (congressional '06) candidates would surely suffer from the chaos, just as they have been doing for a year or more.'

"But over the long haul, the Iraq story will reassert itself. And it will be hard for the administration to mask the fact that Maliki -- ballyhooed by the Bush team as a symbol of the new democracy, and viewed by the team as perhaps our last, best hope -- has already failed in his initial mission to tame the rampant sectarian violence around Baghdad."

Michael Steele's ill-advised lunch encounter with nine reporters draws a scolding from Power Line's Paul Mirengoff :

"To note how tough it is to run as a Republican this year in Maryland is to express no more than a truism, and I have long expected Steele to distance himself from President Bush. But that doesn't mean he had to spill his guts to a group of liberal journalists, apparently including Dana Milbank -- Dana Milbank for goodness sake. And one can distance oneself from the president without attacking him as harshly (and in my view unfairly) as Steele did. Steele showed extremely poor judgment in trying to get his message of moderation out through liberal journalists who would like to see him lose, instead of speaking directly to the voters. Now, with some conservative voters alienated, it will be more difficult (or at least risky) for him to continue to distance himself from the president and the conservative wing of his party.

"There have always been, and always will be, Republican politicians who feel the need to assure liberal journalists that they don't really buy into the party's conservative message."

Excuse me, but does Mirengoff know all nine reporters who were at Charlie Palmer's steakhouse? And does he have the capacity to read their minds? How does he know they want Steele to lose? Or do all journalists in his view wear a scarlet L, not unlike the scarlet R that Steele says comes with being a Republican these days? The assembled scribes, by the way, were there at the candidate's invitation.

Regarding that Miami Herald report on many TV critics walking out on Roger Ailes at their convention, Peter Carlin of the Oregonian e-mails: "I can say for certain that there was no mass exodus from the ballroom . . . If Fox News Channel had a higher attrition rate than usual it could just as easily have been because they were entertainment reporters filing stories on Fox Broadcasting shows."

Rupert Murdoch, though, doesn't have to worry about turnout at a big corporate retreat he's holding this weekend, as the LAT reports:

"Speakers at the Pebble Beach event will include such political powers as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former President Clinton and Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres. Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton will opine on remaking complex organizations, former Vice President Al Gore will riff on climate change, and U2's Bono will deliver a keynote address titled 'The Power of One.'"

Oh, and John McCain and Newt Gingrich, too.

Ryan Lizza says in the New Republic that John Edwards's candidacy is looking up:

"It's now official: John Edwards is the new anti-Hillary. If you're not familiar with the term, 'the anti-Hillary' is the shorthand used by political junkies to describe the Democratic candidate who will inevitably emerge as the principal alternative to Hillary Clinton, whose money and star power make her the dominant force in Democratic presidential politics . . .

"His anti-Hillary bona fides were sealed on Saturday, when a Democratic National Committee (DNC) panel approved a plan to bookend the New Hampshire primary with contests in Nevada and South Carolina, creating a schedule that seems tailored to Edwards's strengths . . .

"More generally, Edwards has a unique message that takes advantage of two of Clinton's vulnerabilities. He has moved left on the war like Feingold, but he maintains an aura of general-election electability like Warner. And perhaps most importantly, he has the experience of running once before without the fatigue factor that sometimes hampers a repeat contender."

Sure, but has he ever lived in the White House?

Check it out: NYT Editor Admits Bias!

Namely, "a bias toward the rich and their shopping habits. And my answer is that while I do not think the paper, in its news section, is biased toward liberals, or biased in favor of (or against!) Israel, I do think, in cultural matters --- of which fashion and, more broadly, style, is one expression -- we are biased (in terms of space devoted to coverage, photography and so on) toward the rich. And the reason we are is that The Times, though not to my mind a simply liberal paper or a pro- or anti-Israeli paper, is an urbane, cosmopolitan paper edited from the world capital of urbanity and cosmopolitanism, Manhattan, which means we are biased in favor of change, possibility, mobility, individual liberty and going to bed late --- oh, and the rich, who are rather concentrated among us. So, philosophically, guilty as charged."--New York Times Magazine Editor Gerald Marzorati .

In light of my item yesterday on how blogger Patrick Hynes was praising John McCain without disclosing he was on the payroll of the senator's PAC, Kos has a good chuckle:

"Ha ha! Conservative blogger was a paid shill for John McCain and failed to disclose it. He was also one of the jokers who criticized me for working for Howard Dean in 2003 -- even though I DID disclose the arrangement."

Is game-show winner Ken Jennings an ungrateful clod? HuffPoster Joel Keller fact-checks Jennings's claim that he was just kidding around in a recent blog post:

"You wouldn't get that impression if you read about it at the Associated Press. '"Jeopardy" champ Ken Jennings blasts game show' was the headline that ran with the AP article, which went on to state that Jennings 'has a few unkind words to say about the show.' When I saw that, I went back to the blog entry, thinking I read it wrong. But I still didn't see a trace of bitterness or any sense that he was 'blasting' the show.

"But then one of my colleagues at TV Squad posted a note about an article by New York Post entertainmet writer Michael Starr which takes quotes from Jennings' blog entry out of context, then concludes that Jennings was biting the hand that fed him. It made me wonder from where exactly the AP had gotten their story.

"So I called the AP to find out. I spoke to Media Relations Manager Jack Stokes and asked if the reporter had read Jennings' blog entry in full. He told me he'd get back to me; within the hour, I got this response from entertainment editor Jesse Washington: 'While Jennings' comments are obviously meant to be humorous, his jokes had more than a little bite to them. We tried to reflect that in our story, although our choice of the word "blasts" in the headline was unfortunate. And we updated the story a few hours later with Jennings explanation of his posting.'

"Fair enough. But nothing in the original AP story indicated that the piece was humorous. For instance, when they mention his obviously tongue-in-cheek line about how Alex Trebek 'died in that fiery truck crash a few years back and was immediately replaced with the Trebektron 4000,' they presented it as if Jennings wrote it with deadly serious intentions."

Well, that's a relief that Alex Trebek isn't a robot.

I'm off for awhile. See you back here later on.