Armstrong Williams Says, "Hey! Where's My Cut?!"

Iraqi hand puppet Iyad Allawi has resorted to a shamelessly old-school campaign strategy, according to this Financial Times article: paying journalists to cover press conferences.

After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most of whom were from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill contained in an envelope.

Many of the journalists accepted the cash - about equivalent to half the starting monthly salary for a reporter at an Iraqi newspaper - and one jokingly recalled how Saddam Hussein's regime had also lavished perks on favoured reporters.

So we've got death squads ready to go, once the election comes out the way we want it to, and we've got the initial workings of your garden-variety propaganda machine (which is very useful in any despotism).

This is the way it starts, and you can bet that once Allawi starts murdering and torturing his political opponents (and he will), the people who need to be 'splainin' themselves will claim ignorance.

Then they'll be promoted.