In prime minister, presidential race gets a touchstone
By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff | September 24, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Apart from the heavy Iraqi accent, he sounded almost like a Republican official introducing President Bush at a campaign stop. [P6: Almost? Allawi IS a Republican official.] 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." [P6: "defeatism" being a term of art, of course.]

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. [P6: Rumsfeld, however, may attack him freely: see two paragraphs down. And not even Bush can stop Rumsfeld's attacks…that would be handing the terrorists a victory.]

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. [P6: no, the thorny problem is newspaper reports that treat this as thoug there MUST be drama. You know what would make me happy? A nice, boring, drama-free exposition of the issues.]

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.