posted by publius
Maliki was quoted in Der Spiegel as saying:
"US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes...Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business...Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems."
This was brought to the attention of the White House press corps by the White House accidentally as it was apparently trying to circulate the story internally.
Marc Ambinder says this could potentially "change forever" the way the issue of Iraq is seen. Josh Marshall is saying this has "cut McCain off at the knees."
Meanwhile CNN is reporting that Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh says Maliki was "misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately." And General Petraeus is saying that Maliki wants "time horizons" not timelines or timetables. I think the Obama campaign's response to this should be: "Fine, if the general thinks "time horizons" are better, we call for a time horizon of about 16 months with some flexibility around that. We're not sure what McCain's time horizon is...perhaps you should ask him."
Perhaps not wanting to change their headlines and make major revisions to their Sunday papers, it appears that most of the major newspapers are mentioning this prominently within their stories about Obama visiting Afghanistan.
The McCain camp's response is that Obama has been calling for "unconditional withdrawl" and that he is not concerned with "victory" or "honor" in pulling the troops out.
Given all this, it seems likely that this story won't have much of an impact at all. However, Obama is about to visit Iraq which means it will have to be mentioned at least a few more times. Obama will be meeting with Iraqi government officials, if not Maliki himself. Won't that be a great time to clearify what Maliki actually said?
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