Tom Friedman has some fun today. Note that this comes from the Iraq News Agency.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — A delegation of
Iraqi judges and journalists abruptly left the U.S. today, cutting
short its visit to study the workings of American democracy. A
delegation spokesman said the Iraqis were ”bewildered” by some of the
behavior of the Bush administration and felt it was best to limit their
exposure to the U.S. system at this time, when Iraq is taking its first
baby steps toward democracy.

The lead Iraqi delegate, Muhammad
Mithaqi, a noted secular Sunni judge who had recently survived an
assassination attempt by Islamist radicals, said that he was stunned
when he heard President Bush telling Republicans that one reason they
should support Harriet Miers for the U.S. Supreme Court was because of
”her religion.” She is described as a devout evangelical Christian.

Mithaqi said that after two years of
being lectured to by U.S. diplomats in Baghdad about the need to
separate ”mosque from state” in the new Iraq, he was also floored to
read that the former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, now a law
school dean, said on the radio show of the conservative James Dobson
that Miers deserved support because she was ”a very, very strong
Christian [who] should be a source of great comfort and assistance to
people in the households of faith around the country.”

”Now let me get this straight,” Judge
Mithaqi said. ”You are lecturing us about keeping religion out of
politics, and then your own president and conservative legal scholars
go and tell your public to endorse Miers as a Supreme Court justice
because she is an evangelical Christian.

”How would you feel if you picked up
your newspapers next week and read that the president of Iraq justified
the appointment of an Iraqi Supreme Court justice by telling Iraqis:
‘Don’t pay attention to his lack of legal expertise. Pay attention to
the fact that he is a Muslim fundamentalist and prays at a Saudi-funded
Wahhabi mosque.’ Is that the Iraq you sent your sons to build and to
die for? I don’t think so. We can’t have our people exposed to such
talk.”

A fellow delegation member, Abdul Wahab
al-Unfi, a Shiite lawyer who walks with a limp today as a result of
torture in a Saddam prison, said he did not want to spend another day
in Washington after listening to the Bush team defend its right to use
torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfi said he was heartened by the fact
that the Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban U.S. torture of military
prisoners. But he said he was depressed by reports that the White House
might veto the bill because of that amendment, which would ban ”cruel,
inhuman or degrading” treatment of P.O.W.’s.

”I survived eight years of torture
under Saddam,” Unfi said. ”Virtually every extended family in Iraq
has someone who was tortured or killed in a Baathist prison. Yet,
already, more than 100 prisoners of war have died in U.S. custody. How
is that possible from the greatest democracy in the world? There must
be no place for torture in the future Iraq. We are going home now
because I don’t want our delegation corrupted by all this American
right-to-torture talk.”

Finally, the delegation member Sahaf
al-Sahafi, editor of one of Iraq’s new newspapers, said he wanted to go
home after watching a televised videoconference last Thursday between
soldiers in Iraq and President Bush. The soldiers, 10 Americans and an
Iraqi, were coached by a Pentagon aide on how to respond to Mr. Bush.

”I had nightmares watching this,”
Sahafi said. ”It was right from the Saddam playbook. I was
particularly upset to hear the Iraqi sergeant major, Akeel Shakir
Nasser, tell Mr. Bush: ‘Thank you very much for everything. I like
you.’ It was exactly the kind of staged encounter that Saddam used to
have with his troops.”

Sahafi said he was also floored to see
the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that
works for Congress, declare that a Bush administration contract that
paid Armstrong Williams, a supposedly independent commentator, to
promote Mr. Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy constituted illegal
propaganda — an attempt by the government to buy good press.

”Saddam bought and paid journalists
all over the Arab world,” Sahafi said. ”It makes me sick to see even
a drop of that in America.”

By coincidence, the Iraqi delegates
departed Washington just as the Bush aide Karen Hughes returned from
the Middle East. Her trip was aimed at improving America’s image among
Muslims by giving them a more accurate view of America and President
Bush. She said, ”The more they know about us, the more they will like
us.”

A definite amount of truth in that. Ah, yes, you also need the final line:

(Yes, all of this is a fake news story. I just wish that it weren’t so true.)

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