This is a most repugnant piece about Iraqi puppet prime minister/car bomber Iyad Allawi in today's New York Times. The writer exhibits that kind of deep ignorance one only finds in dispatches by foreign correspondents of the New York Times. Here you will read that Iraqis, who have had bloody enough of the brutal rule of the Ba`thists, are quite pleased with the thuggish Ba`thist background of this car bomber. You will also read that "many Iraqis are only too happy to believe that their new prime minister is a tough guy who is on their side"; and that Allawi "appears to be acquiring a measure of legitimacy among the Iraqi people." How our--I mean your--correspondent gets all this information is beyond my ken. These journalists are isolated in a small "green zone" in Baghdad, and speak no Arabic, and yet have no qualms about pontificating about Iraqi public opinion. Do you see why the US government does not need to own media in the US. Washington Post and New York Times do a great job for US Empire.