Maliki Backs Obama’s Iraq Plan, Then Claims He Doesn’t?

One risk of doing podcasts are that they can become quickly outdated. That happened today. In an interview with Der Speigel magazine, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki all but endorsed Obama’s Iraq plan:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded “as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.” He then continued: “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.”

This was just after Maliki and President Bush had agreed on “time horizons” and Gen. Petraeus had said in an interview that withdrawal depended on facts on the ground, and would not consider a timeline.

Marc Ambinder laid out why this was a big deal:

This could be one of those unexpected events that forever changes the way the world perceives an issue. Iraq’s Prime Minister agrees with Obama, and there’s no wiggle room or fudge factor. This puts John McCain in an extremely precarious spot: what’s left to argue? to argue against Maliki would be to predicate that Iraqi sovereignty at this point means nothing. Obviously, our national interests aren’t equivalent to Iraq’s, but… Malik isn’t listening to the generals on the ground…but the “hasn’t been to Iraq” line doesn’t work here.

Later in the day, US Central Command (the office of General Petraeus) issued a “correction”:

Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, issued a statement saying Mr. Maliki’s statement had been “as not conveyed accurately regarding the vision of Senator Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, on the timeframe for U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq,” but it did not address a specific error. It did soften his support for Mr. Obama’s plan and implied a more tentative approach to withdrawing troops.

Matt Yglesias underlines why the correction isn’t much of one:

… [T]he walkback (a) doesn’t involve Maliki on the record, (b) says the reports are inaccurate but doesn’t name inaccuracies, and (c) was issued through CENTCOM. Basically, this morning we saw Maliki speaking in person and endorsing Obama’s plan to end the occupation in no uncertain terms. By the late afternoon, an Iraqi government spokesman was pretending this never happened in a statement released by the occupying army. That’s hardly even a serious effort at bamboozlement.

The first serious response by McCain was essentially the campaigning scoffing that Obama had not supported the surge that was responsible for withdrawal being palatable:

“Let’s be clear, the only reason that the conversation about reducing troop levels in Iraq is happening is because John McCain challenged the failed Rumsfield-strategy in Iraq and argued for the surge strategy that is responsible for the successes we’ve achieved and which Barack Obama opposed. Unlike Barack Obama, John McCain has never ignored the facts on the ground in Iraq, he’s never avoided the warzone before proposing new strategy, and he’s never voted against funding our troops in the field. If John McCain was following Barack Obama’s lead on foreign policy, the United States would have already withdrawn from Iraq in a humiliating defeat at the hands of al Qaeda.” —Tucker Bounds, spokesman John McCain 2008.

The second response of the McCain campaign emphasizing that Obama ignores shifting events on the ground:

“The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama advocates an unconditional withdrawal that ignores the facts on the ground and the advice of our top military commanders. John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground. Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today. Timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor, which is of no apparent concern to Barack Obama. The fundamental truth remains that Senator McCain was right about the surge and Senator Obama was wrong. We would not be in the position to discuss a responsible withdrawal today if Senator Obama’s views had prevailed.”

This all comes a day after John McCain had started to use the phrase “succeeded” in regards to Iraq instead of “succeeding.” He crouched his words with caveats, but the shift in emphasis was clear:

“I’m happy to tell you we’ve succeeded in Iraq and we—unless we reverse the strategy that’s succeeding we will win this war. But it’s fragile and it must be dictated—the strategy must be dictated by the situation on the ground. Not some artificially, politically schedule for withdraw as sen Obama wants to do,” McCain told a crowd in Kansas City, MO.

Reporters questioned McCain on his rhetoric of success at a stop in Grand Haven, MI since in the past McCain has phrased the status in Iraq as “succeeding,” as opposed to “succeeded.”

McCain told reporters, “Military, economic, political, and all the benchmarks we said that the Iraqi government had to meet” have allowed for the word “succeeded” to be used.

However McCain admitted, “They haven’t met them all. Do they have a lot more to go– distance to go? Yes and it’s very fragile. And can be reversed. But they’ve succeeded and if we will continue this, we will win this war.”

Moreover, with Obama in Afghanistan and Iraq this weekend, this is about the perfect time for this story to break as far as the Obama campaign is concerned. Moreover, as Joe Klein points out, Maliki also rejected a permanent presence in the way that McCain had supported.

Where do things go from here? It seems that things in Iraq will either stay mostly as they are or get slightly better, or alternatively get much worse. If things stay close to how they are, Maliki will keep up local pressure for the Americans to leave. If things get worse, McCain may lose his leverage that the surge was the reason for things getting better.

McCain had for a while a strategic advantage on Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki ended that today.

It’s not that surprising that no one on the Corner has mentioned this yet. Until something else happens, there’s not really much to say. Redstate has two posts: one on the surge being the reason for any withdrawal, another trumpeting the “correction” press release without wondering what exactly the mistranslation was. Powerline has not mentioned it at all. The Weekly Standard hasn’t posted anything at all since the Der Spiegel article came out. Carol Platt Liebau at Townhall takes a stab: she argues that America should determine how long it takes to make Iraq secure and only then leave, no matter what Maliki says. The problem is that McCain has already said that Iraq should have a strong say:

Question: “What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there?”

McCain’s Answer: “Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because — if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.”

There’s no easy argument out of this for McCain. The two responses by his campaign today and the confused reaction from the conservative blogosphere makes this pretty clear.