If you were away from the news over the weekend, you may not have heard about a game-changing moment in the presidential campaign. 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.”
For McCain, this is rather devastating. Josh Marshall explained, “Maliki has now handed Obama the trump card of all trump cards with which to parry all of McCain’s attacks.” Or, as a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign told the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, “We’re fucked.”
We’ve learned a few important details over the last 24 hours. First, a rather odd statement released by U.S. Central Command on the Maliki government’s behalf suggesting Maliki was “misunderstood and mistranslated” — but the statement only came after the Bush administration leaned on Maliki’s office to help put a lid on this public-relations disaster for Bush and McCain.
The statement by an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki calling his remarks in Der Spiegel “misinterpreted and mistranslated” followed a call to the prime minister’s office from U.S. government officials in Iraq. […]
[A]fter the Spiegel interview was published and began generating headlines Saturday, officials at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad contacted Maliki’s office to express concern and seek clarification on the remarks, according to White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. Later in the day, a Maliki aide released a statement saying the remarks had been misinterpreted, though without citing specific comments.
Not exactly the kind of development that helps the Bush/McCain case.
Second, and more importantly, the notion that Der Spiegel “misinterpreted and mistranslated” Maliki’s endorsement of Obama’s policy has been definitely put to rest. The initial report was accurate, and Maliki said what he’d been quoted as saying.
The NYT dropped the ball in its Sunday edition, but does some solid reporting today.
“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” [the Maliki government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh] said Sunday by telephone. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.”
But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.
The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”
He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”
It sounds like Maliki accidentally said what he actually believes. Indeed, Der Spiegel didn’t even bring up Obama’s name — Maliki did.
As for the bigger picture, the AP’s Robert Reid had some smart analysis.
The Iraqi prime minister’s seeming endorsement of Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal plan is part of Baghdad’s strategy to play U.S. politics for the best deal possible over America’s military mission.
The goal is not necessarily to push out the Americans quickly, but instead give Iraqis a major voice in how long U.S. troops stay and what they will do while still there.
It also is designed to refurbish the nationalist credentials of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who owes his political survival to the steadfast support of President Bush. Now, an increasingly confident Iraqi government seems to be undermining long-standing White House policies on Iraq. […]
With Obama due to visit Iraq soon, al-Maliki’s spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh was quick to discredit the report, saying the prime minister’s remarks were “not conveyed accurately.” A top al-Maliki adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, insisted the Iraqi government does not intend to be “part of the electoral campaign in the United States.”
But that is precisely what the Iraqis intended to do: exploit Obama’s position on the war to force the Bush administration into accepting concessions considered unthinkable a few months ago.
That makes a lot of sense. When the Bush administration first started making demands as part of a proposed long-term security agreement, Bushies were making outrageous demands about long-term bases and control of Iraqi airspace. Iraqis balked.
Now, after weeks of public comments about withdrawal timelines, the Bush gang is suddenly more flexible, even agreeing to a “general time horizon” for the removal of U.S. troops.
Does this mean Maliki’s endorsement of the Obama policy was just about currying favor with Iraqi voters? In some ways, it almost doesn’t matter — as Matt Yglesias explained over the weekend, “Even granting the premise that Maliki’s statements are purely about Iraqi domestic politics, all this amounts to is the fact that Barack Obama’s plan for Iraq is, according to both the Maliki government and the McCain campaign’s analysis, the only way forward that’s politically viable in Iraq.”