It's not just CBS, folks. Never have we seen a media full-court press in support of a candidate comparable to what is now occurring on behalf of John Kerry. One of the worst offenders is the Associated Press; we've written about their outrageously biased reports before.

Today, the AP reports on Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's speech to a joint session of Congress. Allawi's speech sounds good; he said:

Today, we are better off, you are better off, the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. Your decision to go into Iraq was not an easy one, but it was the right one.

We Iraqis know that Americans have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices to liberate Iraq, to assure Iraq's freedom. I have come here to thank you and to promise you that your sacrifices are not in vain.

And the AP admits that Allawi's speech "was warmly received by U.S. lawmakers." (Hey, at least they didn't claim that the Congressmen booed.)

But the bulk of the AP's account of Allawi's speech is not devoted to an account of Allawi's speech. It is devoted to undercutting and contradicting Allawi's statements, and suggesting that his address to Congress was merely a political ploy by the Bush administration. Consider these quotes from the AP's story:

In an appearance that President Bush's advisers hoped would ease American voters' doubts about the troubled campaign in Iraq, Allawi told a joint meeting of Congress...

Allawi's two-day visit comes as troop casualties and civilian kidnappings in Iraq have increased, large parts of the country have come under the control of insurgents and doubts have surfaced at the United Nations that democratic elections can be held in January as planned.

Allawi sought to tie the struggle in Iraq to the larger fight against global terrorism, echoing one of Bush's campaign themes.

After his address, Allawi was heading to the White House for a meeting with President Bush, where the two leaders were to assert from the White House Rose Garden that progress is being made and the future is bright in Iraq.

And, just in case any readers missed the point, here is how the AP concludes its coverage of Allawi's speech:

An assessment of Iraq's future put together recently by U.S. intelligence officials spoke of possibilities ranging from tenuous stability to civil war, and even some senators in Bush's Republican Party have said there is a need for more candid talk from the White House.

This kind of shameless electioneering is typical of the Associated Press's news coverage. And, because the AP is the dominant wire service, its blatantly biased story will appear in hundreds, if not thousands, of newspapers.

UPDATE: John Kerry joined right in with the AP's themes:

I think the prime minister is obviously contradicting his own statement of a few days ago when he said that terrorists are pouring into the country.

The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story. [Ed: He's right about the reporting, anyway.]

The president skedaddled out of New York so quickly he barely had time to talk to any leaders. We need to behave like we're at war.

That last comment is revealing; Kerry's idea of how to "behave like we're at war" is to hang around the U.N. hobnobbing with "foreign leaders." Of course, Prime Minister Allawi is a foreign leader, too. But Kerry has a highly selective list of "leaders" and "allies" to whom we should defer, and he is remarkably quick to denigrate and insult leaders and allies who don't suit his political purposes.

Worst of all, however, is this:

Allawi told a joint meeting of Congress Thursday that democratic elections will take place in Iraq in January as scheduled, but Kerry said that was unrealistic.

"The United States and the Iraqis have retreated from whole areas of Iraq," Kerry told reporters outside a Columbus firehouse. "There are no-go zones in Iraq today. You can't hold an election in a no-go zone."

So the Democratic Party's candidate for President is on record as saying that January elections are impossible; or, if held, they will be illegitimate. The primary purpose of the terrorists' current terror campaign is to force the postponement or cancellation of the Iraqi elections. A secondary objective has been to secure the election of John Kerry. Through Kerry's own actions, those objectives have now become one. Kerry's message to the terrorists is: What you're doing is working. Keep it up. If I'm elected, you'll get your wish and there will be no elections in Iraq.

In all of American history, is there any parallel to Kerry's disgraceful conduct?

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