http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/19/almaliki.obama/index.html

But a spokesman for al-Maliki said his remarks "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately."

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the possibility of troop withdrawal was based on the continuance of security improvements, echoing statements that the White House made Friday after a meeting between al-Maliki and U.S. President Bush.

Funny. Milaki says he agrees with Obama. You say, phew, its a good thing, because if he said the opposite we would be screwed. Then, McCain says don't listen to Maliki. Then Maliki says "I was misunderstood."

I wonder what he will say when he meets with Obama in person.

Also, Maliki says that the war has been won. I'm sure that Obama will be repeating that bit, right?

Apparently this spokesman's "correction" was released by CentCom, which is not generally the case for statements that are ostensibly supposed to come from the Iraqi govt.

Also, Ali al-Dabbagh, the gut giving the "correction", has repeatedly done White House press conferences, side-by-side with none other than Dana Perino.

Just adding a little context to this sudden backpedal. More at DailyKos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/19/224359/002/167/554100

I think the broader significance of this comment is that McCain appears to be in favor of occupying a country regardless of the wishes of a government we acknowledge as legitimate.

Pottery Barn, dude. Pottery Barn.

I have no idea about Crate and Barrel's break it you fix it policy, but the American public is well dialed in to the Pottery Barn ethos thanks to General Powell.

Actually the Pottery Barn doesn't have that rule either. Also, it's "You break it, you own it." Doesn't say anywhere you can fix it. And, much as the No End But Victory types (including Bush and McCain) would like to think otherwise, we don't have to fix it.

As for Maliki's saying that the war is won: Meh. Most Americans realize that it was wrong to start the war against Iraq, which was Obama's position and not McCain's. Now the Iraqis are saying that US troops should leave, which is Obama's position and not McCain's. Whether you count the war as won or not -- I think it's won in the George Aiken sense -- it looks like Obama's policies are better than McCain's in retrospect and going forward. And this also undercuts the McCain campaign's scurrilous claim that Obama's desire to withdraw amounts to "buil[ding] a political strategy around us losing the war in Iraq." (I don't think I can put another link in, but you can Google the end of that phrase.)

Gah. I meant "We don't own it," not "We don't have to fix it."

(Since I get a free link with a new comment, here's the McCain campaign's disgusting claim about Obama's political strategy.)

"""Maliki's comments free them of that responsibility. The political impact of this is tremendous:"""

I am sure you simply meant the German magazines comments, misquotes and mis-interpretations. Malaki denies ever saying such things, why do you claim to know better then Maliki??

Why is it that when it comes to Obam, so many times the press mis-quotes and mis-hears what people are trying to say??

"Malaki denies ever saying such things, why do you claim to know better then Maliki??"

Uh, no. A CENTCOM spokesman claims it was inaccurate, without specifying inaccuracies.

The PROBLEM you are seeing with oversees leaders Ezra is a problem of Barack Obamas creation.

He has shown he will be a complete disaster in foriegn policy.

You saw the same thing in Germany:

Baracks campaign proclaimed unilaterally they were planning a speech at the Brandenburg gates. Didn't even bother to check with that foriegn government first to see how that would go over, for a not even nominated candidate to be given such a platform and it to appear germany is siding with one campaign. So Merkel was put between Obama (the polled next President) and McCain (the probable next President).

This was VERY POOR diplomacy on Baracks part and shows how full of himself he is.

The problem with Malakki is the same. Obama unilaterally declared surrender in 16 months. With no coordination with Iraq. So Muqtada Al Sadr called for a voted referendum on US withdrawal.

Obama left Malakki stuck between Obama, the probable polled next President and pressure being put on him from the Shias.

Once again, VERY POOR diplomacy on Obamas part. He copmpletely undercut Maliki's position and with all the press practically crowning him next President, of course Malaiki is going to have to publicly seem to accomodate him.

So far Baracks foriegn policy skills have been a complete disaster. He tried to get Germanys' leader to have to take sides in our election and got Malikki on the defensive against Muqtada Al Sadr.

Great job Barack! What are you going to screw up next? Perhaps call for a undivided Jerusalem again?

I think the left has a term for what Barack has engaged in...

COWBOY DIPLOMACY.......

Didn't even bother to check with that foriegn government first to see how that would go over...

Oh, I see, foreign opinions matter when a democrat wants to make a speech, but not when a republican wants to bomb some random country.

So far Baracks foriegn policy skills have been a complete disaster.

I'm glad to see that you've recovered from the coma you've been in for the last 8 years, but I think you'll need to update your definition of "complete disaster".

"great job, barack!"

couldnt agree with you more, patton!
this is just the beginning of his journey, but so far, his lengthened stay in afghanistan, and the photographs of genuine delight and admiration lighting up the faces of the soldiers, is wonderful to see!
he is being warmly welcomed.
it is great to see an american leader warmly welcomed again on foreign soil.
i echo your sentiments,
"great job, barack!" ...and G-dspeed.

Patton, people who can't spell "foreign" have little credibility analyzing diplomacy or foreign policy in general. Had you considered learning English during your time in the US?

Malaki denies ever saying such things, why do you claim to know better then Maliki??

Malaki hasn't denied anything. "An Iraqi government spokesman" who puts out press releases through CentCom asserted that there had been a mistranslation, but he couldn't identify anything that had been mistranslated.

The interview is pretty clear. You can't just change a word or two and change its meaning. Malaki not only said he supported a fast-as-possible withdrawal, we laid down the logic behind such a position.

It seems to me there's some danger of the Repubs spinning this as "We can withdraw because we won the war! Now Iraq is free of Saddam, is becoming a stable democracy, the beacon of the future in the Middle East we wanted it to be, and we've dealt Al-Quaida a terrible blow! So, what's not to like? Looks like you were wrong about Iraq all along, Obama! And do we really want this person who was against the greatest foreign policy success of the last 20 years as our president?"

Maliki has given the Republicans a way to be in favor of a politically popular withdrawal without disowning the last 5+ years, if only they could see it. Obama would be forced to run against a war that everybody agrees is over, rather than on its future.

John they can only spin the 4100 dead American soldiers and the trillion dollars and counting tab so far. We could throw a couple hundred thousand Americans and billions and billions of dollars at almost any problem the world faces from hunger to deforestation to clean energy and bumble our way to some positive outcome which would not necessarily make the cost/benefit analysis work out.

Personally I am happy Saddam is dead and his kids too. But I kind of think we could have had that outcome at a hell of a less cost to us and Iraq. Basically the situation was that we had a large cockroach scurrying around and a desire to irradicate it. So our solution of choice was to take sledgehammers and dynamite to the kitchen. That we can argue with a straight face that there are fewer cockroaches around doesn't obscure the fact that we wrecked the room.

"greatest foreign policy success of the last 20 years"? I don't think so. It is not that liberating a country of 26 million from a dictator is not important, you just would like to do so in a way that had electricity more available to Iraqi civilians and less available to ungrounded shower fixtures for US troops. "Except for all the dead, penniless, and homeless civilians there and the maimed, blind and brain damaged GIs here what's not to like?"

Somehow I don't think the Republicans have a successful sales pitch there.

"The problem with Malakki is"
"Obama left Malakki stuck"
"He copmpletely undercut Maliki's position"
"of course Malaiki is going to have to publicly seem to accomodate him."
"got Malikki on the defensive"

I don't normally comment on typos, but 4 different spellings in 5 tries is pretty impressive.

Its not lost on the Iraqis that Obama plans to END the war, while McCain plans to WIN the war.

Obama's clear direction he says he will order the military to END THE WAR, not WIN THE WAR, not, leave as long as no Iraqis get hurt and terrroists don't take over. etc. He is clearly saying we are leaving and Iraq can go to hell for all I care.

So anyone still under the illusion that Barack cares at all about the Iraqi public, about fighting islamic terrorism or even opposing islamic expansionism is just deluding themselves.

Der Spiegel stands by its article, and somehow I'm more inclined to go with them than a CENTCOM issued and lame 'correction':

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...

...Other major newspapers in Baghdad on Sunday, including the government affiliated al-Sabah, the independent daily al-Mashriq and Iraq's leading paper al-Zaman quote the SPIEGEL interview at length. There is no mention of al-Dabbagh's statement denying Maliki's support of Obama's withdrawal plans, but it may have come after the papers went to press.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,566914,00.html

Patton and the ones playing up the walkback are probably right, though not in the way they imagine. If Maliki appears on TV in a couple of days, flopping sweat with dark circles under his eyes, and delivers a stammering, Pentangeli-esque recantation of his earlier remarks, only people unfamiliar with the Bush administration ought to be surprised by it.

Bruce Webb:
""We could throw a couple hundred thousand Americans and billions and billions of dollars at almost any problem the world faces from hunger to deforestation to clean energy and bumble our way to some positive outcome """

Yeah just look at the bang up job the Democrats did with Vietnam and Korea. Bush has been a miserable failure at getting U.S. soldiers killed compared to the Democrats for the past century.

Iraq war: 2 per day
Vietnam 18 per day
Korea: 32 per day

Democrats must be objecting to Bush keeping causuaties so low.

"[V]oters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders."

Don't underestimate the potential of that spin. It reinforces the undercurrent meme that Obama is a closet Muslim on "their" side rather than "ours."

For this gift from Maliki to really pay off, Obama needs a comparable quasi-endorsement from a prominent Israeli. Some reinforcement from U.S. military/counterterrorism types, preferably with whitebread surnames (other than Clark), would help, too.

"""SPIEGEL sticks to its version of the conversation"""

And have they released a tape of what exactly he said??

Remember this is the same Der Spiegel that smeared IKEA with false reporting and later had to apologize for an article reeking with lies...

part of their excuse was: """The story sounds good, but it unfortunately isn't true," ""

Hey, sounds good to us...let's go with it. welcome to modern liberal jounalism 101.

Bruce:
I agree that it's at best a Pyrrhic victory, and any more like it will reduce us to the high end of third-world countries both socially and economically speaking. But, you know, 4-5000 dead isn't very many for a five year war. And for people who want to think of America as a winner, "We defeated Iraq and made it far better for the inhabitants at a cost of only 4000 soldiers" is an appealing salve. Then you just put on some blinkers about the economic cost - "a trillion dollars? That's less than one month of GDP over five years! Cheap!" and the Iraqi dead and displaced - "war is tough! You can't make an omelet..." Presto! You have an independent who was previously leaning Republican now deciding to actually vote Republican.

Still, I think it was little better than a disaster from beginning to end, but I'm not a swing voter, so it doesn't matter to the spinmeisters what I think.

George H.W. bush was not rewarded for winning a war we should have fought.

Even Winston Churchill was voted out of office after winning a war that needed to be fought.

"Winning" in Iraq, a war that certainly did not need to be fought, is NOT going to help McCain.

Perversely, if we were losing in Iraq, he'd have a better chance at the polls.

He is clearly saying we are leaving and Iraq can go to hell for all I care.

Actually, he's saying that Iraq will be better off not under foreign occupation.

Your "good intentions" allowed thousands of terrorists to invade Iraq, kill tens of thousands, and set off a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands.

The Iraqis can take care of themselves. Your Big Government Nannyism-as-foreign-policy doesn't actually mean you're making anyone better off.

I think it's pretty clear so far that McCain's base has decided that the public isn't going to have an opinion on this because they aren't going to hear about it. Nothing to see here comrades, everyone move along.

Patton adjust those KIA per day ratios against the fact that we save more WIA even if they end up 100% disabled and get back to me. I am glad that our forward and rear capability to evacuate casualties and save their lives has improved in almost miraculous ways. To promote that as a metric of comparative success in warfare is ill.

Joe from L: ""Actually, he's saying that Iraq will be better off not under foreign occupation"""

Truly? And where exactly does Barack get that notion?

Was it the Iran/Iraq war that killed over a million people - Is that the Iraq you are pointing to as a success?

Or was it the invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia? is that the time in Iraqs history that Obama is harkening back to?

Was it Iraqs' building and pursuit of WMDs ?

Was it when Saddam and Cliton were killing a million Iraqs with genocidal sanctions?

Or was it when Iraq was funding and training globak terrorist groups?

Just what is Baracks evidence the Iraq is, or has ever been 'better' left to their own devices? Seems we have a 40 year history and death torture and misery for the people of Iraq, 'not under occupation'.

And if Iraq is going to be better, then why is he taking 16 months to leave? hell, he can get the troops out in less then 6 months if he really wanted..

Patton while you are adjusting those KIA/WIA ratios you might also want to adjust your Truman/Eisenhower ratios in Korea and the Johnson/Nixon ratios in Vietnam. Your suggestion that those wars were Democratic ones needs some qualification.

Here are the two choices:

a) The surge worked. Therefore, we should leave now.

b) The surge isn't working. Therefore, we should leave now.

You lose both on substance and soundbite.

ps- the "you" to whom I am referring are conservatives. this isn't strategically an argument you can win because at base "leave iraq" is where the American people are. At best you can win a tactical fight here and there, but ultimately they won't matter either substantively or politically. Of course, the biggest problem you face is that McCain is well down in the polls even with this supposed advantage. That should tell you something too. It won't, but it should. You face oblivion so you must fight this last fight or else become the Southern Republicans Party.

The American people want to leave Iraq. Maliki wants us to leave Iraq.

Maliki has power in the form of being PM of a sovereign nation. The American people have power because they can vote.

I'm not sure how anyone else -- McCain or any special interests -- really play a functional role in the decisionmaking here.

this is the problem:

malaki and the iraqis want us out becuase bush was attempting to strong arm them into signing an agreement which gives american permenant presence, complete autonomy for troops and contractors, a percentage of oil revenue and bases to attack iran. if we do somethiing illegal in the country, they would not be able to do anything for recourse. it was an offer of modern colonialism. the iraqis are having an election and more than 70% want us gone quickly. malaki will not get reelected and if he continues to side with bush he will be killed in the streets. they want us out. this is mccain's problem, he wants to stay no matter what, they want us to go no matter what. malaki is refusing to sign any agreement that does not involve us leaving but agreeing fund their rebuilding. the agreement has to be signed by the time the un agreement expires in december. their elections are in october. malaki is going to let this run out or push it as close to october as possible. but the concensus in iraq is please get out. mccain is on the wrong side of this issue no matter how they spin it. we want out, they want us out. mccain wants to stay no matter what.

he has a problem.

All McCain has is foreign policy. He has to fight tooth and nail on this because this is the crucial distinction between himself & Obama. The problem is Bush has made much of his second term rationale for the Iraq invasion about democratization. To deny the legitimacy of a democratically-elected government further shows how oriented McCain is to fighting. But for what?

Considering how most liberals today think Vietnam was a mistake and most conservatives think Korea was the right thing to do, you have to wonder what the point of posting KIA ratios are. Okay, we liberals promise not to elect LBJ this year!

Shorter McCain campaign: who gives a fuck what the Iraqis want? This is all about our precious ego-driven "victory".

The height of imperialism -- saying that you know better than the fuzzy-wuzzies whose country you invaded.