The Gonzales Black Out

Steve Benen at TPM couldn’t understand why Alberto Gonzales was sent to Iraq.  Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog read it as prep work for the September pro-surge sales effort.

Now that AG² is unquestionably the Administration’s largest albatross, however, (what with Karl out of the way), whatever benefit the White House was looking to gain from this visit must have clearly been weighed against the potential ridicule of any visual evidence.  (After all, sending Gonzales to advise the Iraqi’s on the rule of law is like … well, I can’t even think of an analogy ridiculous enough.) 

The result was a visual blackout the likes I’ve hardly seen.

Amazingly, there was not one photo — newswire or otherwise — I could find of the trip.  WAPO had nothing.  The NYT had less than nothing.  Even Newsweek, which was all over the story and even had an exclusive “on the ground” interview of the lawless one (a caustic back-and-forth, at that), pictorially had zip, even though they had him right there.  (They, instead, ran a pre-trip shot of Gonzales and Bush at the White House.)

In fact, the only reason I can even show you Alberto in the desert dust is because, after scouring, this little media pic turned up … from Iran.

(image:  presstv.ir.  Iraq. August 12, 2007)