Iraqi Prime Minister Supports Obama's Iraq Plan, Not McCain's (Republican Strategist Says "We're Fucked")

So Obama is now on his world tour, which will take him through the Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, the Occupied Territories, and Europe, among other places. John McCain has of course been attacking Obama on the fact he hasn't been on one of these trips for two years (he has been campaigning for the presidency for one and a half years, that doesn't leave much free time). McCain asserts that Obama hasn't met with Gen. Petraeus so he can't possibly know what is going on in Iraq. This, despite the fact that Obama met with Petraeus while he was testifying before Congress a few months ago. Apparently it isn't the actual meeting with Petraeus that is important, it is the longitude and latitude of that of that meeting. Somehow meeting with him in the US yields different results than if that meeting occurred in Iraq. Perhaps Obama should also meet with him in Antarctica, because who knows what he might say there.

And of course Petraeus has his own agenda, which closely reflects Bush's agenda. After all, Petraeus has misled Congress before. And Obama has made it clear that the military doesn't shape US foreign policy, the president does, yet he will take what they say under consideration. Of course McCain seems to think that this country is ran by the military, and that by talking to the military we can understand the big picture of our foreign policy. This, of course, helps explain why McCain and Bush have been so wrong on virtually everything. Obama, it turns out, has been right again and again, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan. Yet despite this, the media buys into this false characterization of McCain as foreign policy expert, juxtaposed with Obama the neophyte. Talk about media bias. It takes quite a leap to view the person (and the party) who has been wrong about so much as the expert, and the person who has been right about so much as the newbie. But hey, that's the media for you.

So anyway, Obama is starting off his trip in Afghanistan today. And today we also got news that already one person supports his Iraq plan: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Yes, probably the only people that you need to go to Iraq to hear, the Iraqis, agree with OBAMA, and think it is best for the US to pull out sooner rather than later:

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: "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

"Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems."

"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 it isn't," Maliki told Der Spiegel.

Maybe McCain should spend a little less time hanging on the every word of military leaders, and a little more time actually listening to the people who run the country we are occupying. What a crazy idea! It has been obvious for a long time that there is no military solution to Iraq. And McCain, Petraeus said that too.

Oh yeah, and let's not forget this little gem from Bush last year:

"We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice," the president said during a Rose Garden news conference. "If they were to say 'leave', we would leave."

Hm, seems that we should be listening to what Obama has been saying, and start packing our bags.

[Update: And let's not forget this little gem from John McCain himself, it'll be fun to see him spin (flip-flop, flip-flop) his way out of this:

QUESTION: Let me give you a hypothetical, senator. 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? I understand it's a hypothetical, but it's at least possible.

McCAIN: Well, if that scenario evolves, then 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.

Well said John, well said.]

It is almost comical how Obama is always right on these things, yet never gets credit. He is constantly being criticized by Bush and McCain. He was criticized for saying he would make surgical strikes at terrorists within the borders of Pakistan if their government is unwilling or unable to do it themselves. Yet then Bush did exactly that, and killed a high ranking al-Qaeda official. And then as violence has risen in Afghanistan, and the Taliban has made gains while al-Qaeda has continued to go free, Obama (oh, and military leaders) called for troops to be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan, and McCain opposed any more troops for Afghanistan. Yet since then things have gotten worse with no new troops, and now McCain supports more troops for Afghanistan. And Obama has supported withdrawing troops from Iraq for a long time, yet Bush, McCain and the Republicans have called that "surrender" and "cutting and running" and opposed any "timelines", only now the military is sounding the same alarms as Obama has been about our military being stressed to the breaking point, and we've reached a point where we have no choice but to withdraw troops because our military simply can't handle it anymore. And of course the Iraqis agree with Obama. And now Bush and al-Maliki are discussing a "time horizon" for withdrawal of US troops. [Update: I almost forgot, Obama has said for months and months now that we should talk to foreign leaders like Ahmadinejad, the Republicans (and even Hillary) have attacked him for it relentlessly, comparing him to Nazi appeasers, and now the Bush administration is finally starting to open diplomatic channels to Tehran.] Time after time Obama has led on these issues, and been right, and McCain and Bush have followed, slowly, and grudgingly. Bush and McCain and the Republicans have been dead wrong from the beginning. And yet the media pushes this "Obama is inexperienced" nonsense, paying absolutely no attention to his vastly superior judgment. It is insanity that the same idiots that got us into this mess to begin with are treated as the smart ones. Our media has absolutely no hindsight. All of the focus is on the future, what we do with the mess now, with absolutely no acknowledgment of who's fault the disaster was to begin with. Bush and McCain should have absolutely no standing to discuss these issues, they should have zero credibility. They made the mistakes that Obama is going to have to clean up. Obama has the answers, it is time the media stop pretending he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Ezra Klein points out the pro-McCain, anti-Obama double-standard in the media, and he is absolutely right:

To really understand the importance of Maliki's comments, you need to consider their opposite. Imagine if Maliki had walked in front of the cameras and said, "at this stage, a timetable for withdrawal is unrealistic, and we hope our American friends will not bow to domestic political pressures and be hasty in leaving Iraq just as the country improves." It would be a transformative moment in this election. John McCain would talk of nothing else. The cable shows would talk of nothing else. Magazines would run thousands of covers about "Obama's Iraq Problem." Obama would probably lose the race.

If something like this happened that boosted McCain's position and made Obama's look bad, the media would tear Obama apart. When it happens to McCain...*crickets*. Thanks media, hopefully SNL will make fun of you at some point so you'll start doing your job. There never was a pro-Obama bias in the media, but the pro-McCain bias has been staggering from the very beginning.

Update: Marc Ambinder puts al-Maliki's announcement in context:

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... Maliki isn't listening to the generals on the ground...but the "hasn't been to Iraq" line doesn't work here.

So how will the McCain campaign respond?

Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, "We're fucked." No response yet from the McCain campaign.

Never fear, we're all counting on the media to sweep it under the rug for you McCain, as usual. Let's hope I'm pleasantly surprised for once..

Update #2: A White House employee screwed up while forwarding the article titled "Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan - magazine" internally (undoubtedly so the Bush administration could start with damage control), and accidentally sent the email to their huge media distribution list! Hahahaha. You can't make this stuff up.

Update #3: The Obama campaign has released a memo highlighting pretty much the exact same things I just highlighted in this blog. Here is the intro, check here for the whole thing:

RE: Obama Leading on Foreign Policy, McCain Following

There are two problems with John McCain’s political attacks on Barack Obama’s foreign policy. First, on the biggest foreign policy questions of the last eight years, Barack Obama has made the right judgment and John McCain has sided with George Bush in making the wrong one. Second, the failure of the McCain-Bush foreign policy has forced John McCain to change his position, and to embrace the very same Obama approaches that he once attacked.

Just this week, Senator McCain has been forced by events to switch to Barack Obama’s position on two fundamental issues: more troops in Afghanistan, and more diplomacy with Iran. On both issues, Obama took stands that weren’t politically popular at the time – opposing the war in Iraq as a diversion from the critical mission in Afghanistan, and standing up for direct diplomacy with Iran – while John McCain lined up with George Bush. Time has proven Obama’s judgment right and McCain wrong.

The next shift appears to be Iraq. For months, Senator McCain has called any plan to redeploy our troops from Iraq "surrender" – even though we’d be leaving Iraq to a sovereign Iraqi government. Now, the Bush Administration is embracing the negotiation of troop withdrawals with the Iraqi government – a position that Senator Obama called for last September, and reiterated on Monday in the New York Times. And now, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports Barack Obama’s timeline, telling Der Speigel that, "Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16 months."

Update #4: This is great, so after the buzz over Maliki's statement, the White House got involved, had the US Embassy in Iraq contact Maliki to "express concern" with his statements, and then an "Iraqi official" released a retraction of his comments from US Central Command (hmm...) saying, that Maliki's statement was "misunderstood and mistranslated" and "not conveyed accurately regarding the vision of Senator Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, on the timeframe for U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq" although the Iraqis never mention what was "mistranslated" or "misunderstood", in fact Maliki's comments really leave absolutely no wiggle room, they were clear as day, and Der Spiegel stands by their reporting. Let's review what Maliki said:

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: "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

"Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems."

"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 it isn't," Maliki told Der Spiegel.

Yeah, I don't see how you can mistake that. It doesn't seem like anyone is buying the coverup. Pretty ridiculous.

Update (7/21): Now McCain is directly disputing the translation of Maliki's comments, even though the New York Times has independently verified the translation as accurate. Oh yeah, and then the same Iraqi spokesman who came out yesterday (from US Central Command) and said Maliki's comments were "mistranslated" and "misunderstood" after the White House threw a fit, came out today and said he hopes US troops can be out by 2010, which is essentially the exact same time frame Obama is pushing for. So much for "mistranslated" and "misunderstood". Yet McCain is still trying to refute this is what the Iraqis want. Keep digging McCain, keep digging.