Pay To Play

Glenn Greenwald brings up a very good point. Iyad Allawi is paying $300,000 to a GOP-connected lobbying firm (perhaps using some of the billion or so his buddy stole from the Iraqi Treasury when he was Prime Minister). A week ago he had an op-ed in the Washington Post essentially laying the blame for Iraq's problems on Nouri al-Maliki, which we've seen congeal into conventional wisdom. And we know that one of the things lobbying groups do is place their clients onto editorial pages to argue for their positions, particularly on the Washington Post's page, which gets the issue in front of the politically connected.

Did a GOP lobbying group pay Fred Hiatt to run an Iyad Allawi op-ed advocating for the overthrow of an elected Iraqi government?

Wouldn't you think that would rate as a scandal?