Of course, Kaus responds with an empty retort that consists of yet another entry from the same Iraqi blog that every InstaWannabe trots out when the big newspapers back their false premises against a wall. (although I won't go as far as those who say Iraq The Model is a CIA project)

It seems that Mickey's razor-witted skepticism fades at the edge red/blue state divide - Kaus, of all people, should understand the success that ensues when one continually tells a conservative audience what they want to hear...

(although I won't go as far as those who say Iraq The Model is a CIA project)

You don't need to go that far, that's cool. But as for myself, I just don't picture a lot of nurses in Baghdad using the American flavoring participle "hmmmm..." all the time, and linking so prominently to Roger L. Simon and Little Green Footballs.

But never mind that. Here's one BBC journalist's experience. If Bremer gave a speech, or something beyond what are commonly called "remarks", it wasn't noted here either, and certainly copies weren't distributed to the media in the Green Zone.

I wonder why nobody has contacted Al Jazeera to see the clip that Iraq The Model claims to have seen, when all other major media said that the handover was a "secret ceremony"?

Lots of room for some real journalism to break through here all this fake neocon blogger bs.

This is really important, someone's got to get to the bottom of this "Iraq the Model" hoax and get some real information. Now that Kaus (who should know better) is slamming a major newspaper with 'evidence' garnered from instapundit via Iraq the Model we have a right to know the truth. I am not a journalist, so someone please start the investigation. It's a great story and will calm down these obnoxious self-righteous neo-con bloggers who act like the only thing that ever mattered to the history of civilization was the liberation of Iraq!

For anyone who cares, here are links at our site to the two accounts in question:

Iraq the Model a fraud?

I've read them for months, and corresponded with them in email once. I'm not really convinced, just based on the grammar they use, which is unlike any mid-easterners I've ever known (including Iraqis who have lived in this country for years), but it's just a hunch. Someone more involved than I should be asking these questions, I just want the truth about what happened; I'd just like to know why the correspondents didn't make mention to any Bremer speech, but a neocon darling did, and why some media pick up the neocon as Gospel.

Someone at BBC Online did an interview with the brothers in mid-June, but it was also unconvincing, it looked like it was done through email, and unslugged by any dateline. This is the piece, and it's a mystery too, in fact--if you can find another piece by "Sarah Brown" at news.google, that would be a little relief.

Now even the L.A. Times is admitting that the previously nonexistent speech did in fact exist. It looks as though someone's tinfoil hat wasn't fastened down tightly enough.