Just as Barack Obama was poised to visit Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, unprompted, announced his belief that Obama’s withdrawal policy “would be the right time timeframe for a withdrawal,” and is “more realistic.” Maliki added that a McCain policy of “artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops” would “cause problems,” and concluded that Republican talking points in general are, at their core, mistaken: “The Americans have found it difficult to agree on a concrete timetable for the exit because it seems like an admission of defeat to them. But that isn’t the case at all.”
The new, political response is that Maliki didn’t actually say what he was quoted saying. A statement released by U.S. Central Command on the Maliki government’s behalf suggests Maliki was “misunderstood and mistranslated.”
Der Spiegel, the magazine Maliki spoke with, not only released a detailed transcript to bolster its report, but issued another statement today standing by its story.
Obama is pleased, but McCain certainly is not. In an interview with SPIEGEL, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki expressed support for Obama’s troop withdrawal plans. Despite a half-hearted retraction, the comments have stirred up the US presidential campaign. SPIEGEL stands by its version of the conversation. […]
A number of media outlets likewise professed to being confused by the statement from Maliki’s office. The New York Times pointed out that al-Dabbagh’s statement “did not address a specific error.” CBS likewise expressed disbelief pointing out that Maliki mentions a timeframe for withdrawal three times in the interview and then asks, “how likely is it that SPIEGEL mistranslated three separate comments? Matthew Yglesias, a blogger for the Atlantic Monthly, was astonished by “how little effort was made” to make the Baghdad denial convincing. And the influential blog IraqSlogger also pointed out the lack of specifics in the government statement.
SPIEGEL sticks to its version of the conversation.
Well, of course it does. There’s no reason at all to question its accuracy.
The “clarification” said there was an error, but didn’t actually name any. Maliki made three separate comments about the superiority of Obama’s policy, and a transcription error couldn’t explain all three. Maliki’s comments were allegedly misunderstood, but the follow-up didn’t quote Maliki at all. And it really doesn’t help that the clarification was issued by the U.S. military’s Central Command press office, not the prime minister’s office.
I think Ben Smith summarized the situation nicely.
It’s almost a convention of politics that when a politician says he was misquoted, but doesn’t detail the misquote or offer an alternative, he’s really saying he wishes he hadn’t said what he did, or that he needs to issue a pro-forma denial to please someone.
The Iraqi Prime Minister’s vague denial seems to fall in that category…. Maliki’s words illustrate a political reality: Foreign players have a real influence on American politics, and they know it. Osama bin Laden appeared to be trying to tilt the 2004 election with a sinister 11th hour statement. His motives are unknown, but observers including John McCain thought he helped President George W. Bush. There’s already quiet speculation about how Al Qaeda will seek to influence this election, and whether they see themselves as standing more to gain from continued American presence in Iraq or from withdrawal. […]
Iraq’s elected leaders have more power than any others. There used to be occasional references to Iraq as the 51st state; the number of American soldiers and civilians in Iraq appears to be well north of 150,000, more than a quarter of the population of Alaska. And both McCain and Obama cast their policies, in part, in terms of what’s good for the Iraqis and what they want.
So while there’s been some suggestion that Maliki was playing domestic politics, this seems like the opposite. (Who plays domestic politics in the pages of Der Spiegel?) Maliki is playing international politics, American politics even. While some may object to that, it may be a sign that he intends to be a player in the American election from now until November, and realizes how much more leverage he has now on the next president’s stance toward his country than he will after our election.
Stay tuned.