Allawi's ascent follows extensive PR campaign

[NeoConsSuck]

--- Here's a sample of democracy, USA style!! ---

Iraq's new prime minister waged an expensive lobbying and public relations campaign beginning last year to build political support — not in Baghdad, but in Washington.

Iyad Allawi benefited from at least $340,000 in spending for Washington lawyers and lobbyists and New York PR agents, all paid for by a wealthy Iraqi expatriate who lives in London.

Allawi's selection last week by his colleagues in the interim Iraqi Governing Council testified to his political skills. But some analysts said his campaign in Washington also had been a major help.

"It was a bid for influence, and it was money well spent," said Danielle Pletka, a Middle East analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "Allawi has always assumed, in many ways correctly, that he didn't need a constituency in Iraq as long as he had one in Washington."

The lobbying was coordinated by the consulting business of Patrick Theros, a former U.S. ambassador to the country of Qatar who knew Allawi. It hired the law firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds and the New York public relations firm of Brown Lloyd James. Theros referred inquiries to PR representatives in the Persian Gulf who could not be reached.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-02-allawi-rise_x.htm

[Cocoa]

1. Allawi knows whose support counts

The contacts included the offices of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.; House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas; and Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Affairs Committee.
Other calls went to officials at the National Security Council, Vice President Cheney's office, the Defense Department, the CIA and three influential Washington think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and Brookings Institution.