Over the weekend, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Der Spiegel, unprompted and by name, that he supports Barack Obama’s withdrawal timeline for U.S. troops in Iraq. The White House furiously sought to characterize this as a transcription error, while the McCain campaign insisted that Maliki’s words had been taken “out of context.”
Now, we’ve known for a couple of days that the Republican talking points on this are completely wrong. The New York Times reviewed the recording of the interview and found that the Der Spiegel transcript was exactly right.
But in case there were any lingering doubts — several news outlets are still characterizing the original Maliki quotes as being in dispute — the Iraqi prime minister actually received a copy of the interview before it went to print. He had the opportunity to make changes, but chose not to.
“We have a policy at Der Spiegel when we do a question and answer session to provide a transcript to our counterparts in case they want to have a minor thing changed,” says Muller von Blumencron, who says Zand verified that Maliki’s aides received the publication-ready advance copy. They had no response, and presumably no complaints, before its release.
Der Spiegel has no plans to release the tape (“We don’t see a need to improve upon our credibility by, say, putting the audio on the web.”) but is happy to play it — in person, over the phone — for any journalist interested in verifying.
Kevin added, “The interview was conducted in English, Maliki’s Arabic answers were then translated into English by Maliki’s own translator, and the completed transcript was later provided to Maliki for his approval before publication. Hopefully this will be the last word on whether or not Maliki really meant what he said.”
I’d just add that while Maliki’s support for Obama’s policy is a disaster for McCain, the White House is still in a very awkward position. As David Kurtz noted, “When a guy you more or less install in power and keep there on a very short leash starts going off the reservation, you first claim there was some sort of translation error. Then you claim that what he says is not what he means. When he continues to reiterate the point, you assert that he knows not of what he speaks.”
And now that none of the talking points can rationalize the prime minister’s remarks, the White House isn’t sure what to do.