An Amazing And Disgraceful Day

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I was sitting in court, waiting for the judge, when I read what Joe Lockhart said about Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi. I gasped audibly. (Silly me! After all, this is Bill Clinton's former press secretary talking.) Then I thought, "Holy Toledo! They're either desperate or they know it's over."

It really is breath-taking. I recommend you read Hindrocket's analysis at Power Line. He also quotes these lines from Bill Kristol's piece in The Weekly Standard:

What we do know is this: Kerry and his advisers have behaved disgracefully
this past week. That behavior is sufficient grounds for concern about his
fitness to be president. . . .

Kerry's rudeness paled beside the comment of his senior adviser, Joe
Lockhart, to the Los Angeles Times: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a
puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the
shirt today moving the lips."

Is Kerry proud that his senior adviser's derisive comment about the leader
of free Iraq will now be quoted by terrorists and by enemies of the United
States, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East? Is the concept of a loyalty to
American interests that transcends partisan politics now beyond the imagination
of the Kerry campaign?

John Kerry has decided to pursue a scorched-earth strategy in this
campaign. He is prepared to insult allies, hearten enemies, and denigrate
efforts to succeed in Iraq. His behavior is deeply irresponsible--and not even
in his own best interest.

There is some chance, after all, that John Kerry will be president in four
months. If so, what kind of situation will he have created for himself? France
will smile on him, but provide no troops. Those allies that have provided
troops, from Britain and Poland and Australia and Japan and elsewhere, will
likely recall how Kerry sneered at them, calling them "the coerced and the
bribed." The leader of the government in Iraq, upon whom the success of John
Kerry's Iraq policy will depend, will have been weakened before his enemies and
ours--and will also remember the insult. Is this really how Kerry wants to go
down in history: Willing to say anything to try to get elected, no matter what
the damage to the people of Iraq, to American interests, and even to
himself?

Indeed. I still can't believe it. As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit says, these guys are acting like people who know they're toast and are just trying to mobilize their base so as to protect the downticket candidates from a landslide. I suppose they are also hoping that something unpredictable will happen and give them a chance to get back on top:

I think that statements like this are more evidence that the Kerry campaign
-- or at least the Clinton folks running it -- expects to lose. Hence, they
don't have to worry about who they'll be working with, but they want to fire up
the anti-Bush base. That doesn't make it any less disgraceful to be going around
uttering comments that might as well be designed to undermine America's
alliances, of course. This sort of stuff is appalling.

Again: Indeed.