Scott ‘Baghdad Bob’ Walker

I’ve been wanting to write a post involving “Baghdad Bob” for quite a while and now I think I’ve finally found a reason. If you don’t know who former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf is, he was the face of the Iraqi regime during the beginning of the Iraq war. Saddam Hussein was nowhere to be found but al-Sahaf, dubbed “Baghdad Bob” by the American press, was on the television spinning fantastic lies about how the war was going for Iraq.

It was of course going badly but you had to respect the man for doing his duty until the end. But what dictator survives without his very dedicated communications staff, and Bob’s role was to obsfucate the truth as much as possible.

“I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.” intoned al-Sahaf during one of his wartime press conferences.

For those of us involved with the Wisconsin Recall effort, Scott Walker had his minions like Cullen Werwie and Ciara Matthews.

They were poor substitutes for Walker himself who seemed to relish the role of saying “Everything is alright” in the face of mounting job losses and a building criminal case that is likely to stick to him as well.

Scott Walker won the recall, and that win has emboldened him to start being a kingmaker in American politics. We find him on television and in the press opining about many issues, but mostly wading into the presidential race. The problem is that this is not the small Wisconsin wading pool where the media and the sheeple electorate lap up his every word almost unfiltered.

Walker’s adventures on the national stage have been mixed at best outside of the protected cocoon of speeches before Washington fundraisers and the Republican National Convention where adulation is guaranteed. His hubris was on display Wednesday night (August 29) when after a vanilla interview by MSNBC’s Ron Mott he took a question from Rachel Maddow and was almost immediately shown as the emperor with no clothes.

That hasn’t stopped Wisconsin’s Baghdad Bob as Walker is out with an essay about President Obama and broken promises relating to the GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. Paul Ryan told several lies about the closing of the plant during his acceptance speech for the Republican Vice-Presidential nomination and Walker later defended him on MSNBC. Ryan has doubled down on the lie in subsequent interviews and so has Walker.

“The reviews of Rep. Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech for the Republican vice presidential nomination are in, and it’s being cited as a success. Is there any wonder that the Obama campaign staffers and surrogates are in full-blown damage control mode, screaming that Paul was unfair in some of his criticisms of President Barack Obama?”

That is the opening paragraph to the Walker opinion piece that appeared Friday on Politico.com. Its a pro-forma recitation of an alternate reality that would make Baghdad Bob very proud.

You can read Scott Walker’s entire piece here