XRLQ EXCLUSIVE: Joseph Mailander, an ultraleftist blogger who purports to be a Martini Republican, is really a secret agent working for the CIA. I’m not at liberty to divulge his real name, which is classified, but I can tell you he is a top secret agent of the Moonbat Division, which serves to discredit moonbats across the blogosphere by pretending to be one of them and making arguments that are even moonbattier (and hence, more easily debunked) than those of the real moonbats.

I base this conclusion about Joseph on absolutely nothing, so sue fisk me if I am wrong. Nevertheless, the odds that I am right about him are no worse than the odds of his being right about Iraq the Model, a popular Iraqi blog he dismisses as a fraud perpetuated by the CIA (scroll down to comment #12, or the second by a guy named Joseph). Joseph’s only evidence for this allegation? Iraq the Model reported extensively on Paul Bremer’s farewell speech (which aired on Iraqi TV but was not publicized to the western media) at a time when the Dog Trainer was still denying that the speech occurred at all. The Frisco Chronicle (another CIA plant, natch) had already reported there was a speech, and quoted a sentence or two from it. Rather than acknowledge the obvious, Joseph defended his indefensible position with some Clintonian hair-splitting over what does or doesn’t constitute a “speech,” coupled with an assumption that the short excerpts quoted by the Chronicle actually were the entire speech. [The Times itself has subsequently acknowledged the error, but Joseph has not, continuing instead with his incresingly implausible "it wasn't really a speech" rationalizations.]

If Joseph is smarter than I think he is, he’ll delete his embarassingly dumb entry in a heartbeat. My guess is that he won’t, but just in case he does, I’ve reproduced it below for posterity. Now go visit his sites and make fun of him.

July 07, 2004 “Iraq The Model” a Fraud?

Rightwing Neocons have long depended on the Iraqi blogger Iraq the Model to provide them with on-the-ground, juicy warmongering legitimacy. But is Iraq the Model a group of legit Baghdad bloggers?

Here’s part of what Iraq the Model said on the day of the handover:

After wards we sat for a while discussing different matters. The hall was busy and everyone was chatting and laughing loud. They had Al-Jazeera on (something I never managed to convince them to stop doing). Then suddenly Mr. Bremer appeared on TV reading his last speech before he left Iraq. I approached the TV to listen carefully to the speech, as I expected it to be difficult in the midst of all that noise. To my surprise everyone stopped what they were doing and started watching as attentively as I was.

The speech was impressive and you could hear the sound of a needle if one had dropped it at that time. The most sensational moment was the end of the speech when Mr. Bremer used a famous Arab emotional poem. The poem was for a famous Arab poet who said it while leaving Baghdad. Al-Jazeera had put an interpreter who tried to translate even the Arabic poem which Mr. Bremer was telling in a fair Arabic! “Let this damned interpreter shut up. We want to hear what the man is saying” One of my colloquies shouted. The scene was very touching that the guy sitting next to me (who used to sympathize with Muqtada) said “He’s going to make me cry!”

Then he finished his speech by saying in Arabic,”A’ash Al-Iraq, A’ash Al-Iraq, A’ash Al-Iraq”! (Long live Iraq, Long live Iraq, long live Iraq).

I was deeply moved by this great man’s words but I couldn’t prevent myself from watching the effect of his words on my friends who some of them were anti-Americans and some were skeptic, although some of them have always shared my optimism. I found that they were touched even more deeply than I was. I turned to one friend who was a committed She’at and who distrusted America all the way. He looked as if he was bewitched, and I asked him, “So, what do you think of this man? Do you still consider him an invader?” My friend smiled, still touched and said, “Absolutely not! He brought tears to my eyes. God bless him.”

Another friend approached me. This one was not religious but he was one of the conspiracy theory believers. He put his hands on my shoulders and said smiling, “I must admit that I’m beginning to believe in what you’ve been telling us for months and I’m beginning to have faith in America. I never thought that they will hand us sovereignty in time. These people have shown that they keep their promises.”

Iraq the Model Handover notes

It’s hard to see how this jibes with this account from the BBC’s Baghdad Correspondent, Caroline Hawley:

We had been summoned to cover a press conference by Mr Bremer – not the much-heralded handover of power.
Such was the secrecy surrounding the early transfer of authority that a jumpy Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) officials initially asked the assembled journalists not to even report on it until an hour-and-a-half after it was all over.

But news that the handover had been brought forward had already slipped out of the Nato summit in Turkey, and so we were finally given the green light to cover what both the new Iraqi president and prime minister called a “historic day”. It was at precisely 1026 Baghdad time on 28 June 2004 that the American military occupation of Iraq was formally declared over. What began last year with a bang ended with barely a whimper – officially at least.
To polite applause, Mr Bremer described himself as the “ex-administrator” of Iraq and then, wearing a suit and his trademark sand-coloured combat boots, he promptly made for the airport.

The CPA had officially ceased to exist, two days ahead of schedule.

The furtive ceremony was a bid, one US official told me in characteristic coalition-speak, to “catch the bad guys off balance”.

No mention of anything moving; just a mention of Bremer referring to himself as an “ex-administrator,” and then very actively fleeing for the airport.

Lots of news accounts around the globe cite Iraq the Model–rather than Al Jazeera, which Iraq the Model claims to have broadcast the “speech”–as their primary source for the Bremer remarks.

UPDATE: The last time Iraq the Model made googleable news was in the middle of last moth, in an online piece conducted by Sarah Brown for the BBC. Ms. Brown does not appear to have conducted this interview in person. This is Ms. Brown’s only bylined piece for the BBC in the past two months.

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