Fantasyland?

Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Allawi visited Washington earlier this week to address Congress. On Thursday, he stood with President Bush in the Rose Garden for a joint press conference. Mr. Allawi was totally ignored by the press.



After the Bush/Allawi press conference, John Kerry was actually asked the following question by a reporter accompanying him in Ohio:



"Allawi told Congress today democracy was taking hold in Iraq and the terrorists were there on the defense. Is he living in the same fantasy land as the president?"



I no longer use the term "unbelievable" to describe such questions from our "unbiased," "professional" mainstream media. Coming from them, this type of question is utterly believable, and will become increasingly so as the major news outlets come to terms with an increasingly certain Bush victory in November.



Mark Steyn, meanwhile, will have none of this:

It would be nice to think this was a somewhat crude attempt at irony, but given America's Ratherized media this seems unlikely. Just for the record, Allawi is not living in a fantasyland. He's living in Iraq, and he begins his day with a dangerous commute across Baghdad's ''Green Zone.'' John Kerry's regular commute, by contrast, is from his wife's beach compound at Nantucket to his wife's 15th century English barn reconstructed as a ski lodge in Idaho. Nonetheless, he's the expert on Iraq and the guy living there 24/7 is the fantasist, and he's happy to assure us the prime minister doesn't know what he's talking about. It's all going to hell, forget about those January elections, etc.

For my part, the press has a lowsy record reporting on the successes in Iraq. The talking heads concluded that a transition from the CPA to an interim Iraqi government would have to be delayed. Instead, the transition happened early. Now these same doom-sayers are predicting a delayed election. On these and most other major events in Iraq, the press have got it wrong.