Sock puppet, part two

via a dKos diary:

"This morning on NBC's Meet the Press, Russert got McCain to go on record against a free press in Iraq. McCain said, "If that's the only way you get stories in, then I'm not terribly offend by it, Tim."

This puts an even smaller box around McCain's few positive efforts, like his anti-torture stand. (As an aside, isn't it a sad commentary on the state of our political dialogue that a Senator gets credit for coming out against torture?)

He may be anti-torture, but shit like this makes his look less and less like a principled stand, and more like yet another calculation of self-interest. That is, it begins to look like he is against torture because he is smart enough to see how it hurts us in the long run. He just ain't smart enough to see how compromising the Iraqi press will have similar blowback.

Well, the folks at an actual pro-American newspaper in Iraq certainly get it (via Abu Aardvark):

Then what is the difference between the American forces and the instruments of tyranny of Saddam Hussein? Saddam repressed and terrorized those on the inside, and paid those on the outside to glorify his image, as we have seen in the story of the oil coupons...

It is true what General Rick Lynch... said, that half the battle is in the media... But do al-Qaeda, and Saddam... and the Americans all wage this war in the same way?
...
We say to the Americans: .. improving your image not by buying the media, but through transparency and supporting a free media... and helping transmit real information, positive and negative without intervention... if the Americans want a puppet media in the region, we say to them: even you!

So, Senator, here's the bottom line: good press coverage will indeed help us in Iraq -- but only if it is earned. Sending Armstrong Williams, Judy Miller and their kind over to Iraq is not going to help with our "hearts and minds" campaign. The way to convince Iraqis that we are better than Saddam is to actually be better than Saddam, not to adopt every last one of his tactics.