The American Debate: If Iraq has sided with Obama, how will McCain spin his spin?

Excerpts from Dick Polman's blog, "Dick Polman's American Debate":

Imagine my surprise, early Saturday morning, to discover, in my e-mail inbox, a news bulletin from the White House, calling attention to an interview that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had just given to the German newspaper Der Spiegel. In that interview, Maliki offered some strong opinions about the issue of U.S. troop withdrawals . . . and made it quite clear that he likes the concept of a 16-month withdrawal timetable - as proposed by the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama.

I at first thought I must be suffering from heat exhaustion. Maliki was siding with Obama? And thereby dealing a major political blow to John McCain, who has been trying to paint Obama's Iraq proposals as naive and irresponsible? Not possible.

Well, as it turned out (and this tidbit would not be known for many hours), the Bush team messed up. (Hardly the first time.) The White House had intended to circulate the Der Spiegel story for internal use only; mistakenly, it had sent it out to the broader journalistic community. Thanks, guys!

And there was Maliki, in the story, implicitly doing quite a number on the McCain campaign. Some quote-worthy highlights: "Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months [for a withdrawal timetable]. 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 [for withdrawal] is closer to reality. . . . "

McCain's aides have been hammering at Obama, claiming that the 16-month timetable reflects ignorance of the facts on the ground . . . and here was Maliki, sounding supportive for a 16-month timetable, based on his own reading of the facts on the ground. It took the McCain people all day Saturday to come up with some kind of response. In the early evening, finally, they did. It was transparently weak: "John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground. Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today."

That spin wasn't very effective, since Maliki had essentially refuted almost every facet of McCain's Iraq policy. . . .

So clearly, the McCain camp needed more help. And the Bush war apparatus did its best to help, but not until the wee hours of early Sunday morning. That's when U.S. military command headquarters put out a statement, quoting an Iraqi government official, saying that Der Spiegel had "misunderstood and mistranslated" the Maliki remarks. The problem was, the statement never pinpointed where the misunderstanding and mistranslations had occurred. . . .

On Sunday, Der Spiegel said it "stands by its version of the conversation." It then forwarded audio of the interview to the New York Times, which did its own translation and, in yesterday's edition, affirmed the Der Spiegel version. It reported, too, that Maliki had brought up the Obama plan on his own, and it added this quote to the record: "Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq."

After a meeting yesterday between Obama and Maliki, the Iraqi government has now jettisoned all the "mistranslation" nonsense and essentially sided with the Obama approach. A Maliki spokesman said the government endorses the concept of "a real timetable" for U.S. troop withdrawal. He then said that the targeted year for withdrawal is 2010. Which happens to be Obama's targeted year.

Well, what does McCain say now? In April 2004, at a Council of Foreign Relations event, McCain was asked what we should do if a sovereign Iraqi government made it clear that we should leave. He replied: "Well, if that scenario evolves, then I think it's obvious that we would have to leave. . . . "

So, in the wake of this Maliki episode, McCain basically has three choices: (1) He can flip-flop on what he said in 2004, and position himself even to the right of Bush, whose administration now speaks of "joint aspirational time horizons" for withdrawal; (2) he can ease his way toward Obama's position on Iraq, just as he has lately on Afghanistan, thereby demonstrating that the wisdom gap on national security is a lot smaller than he'd like it to be; or (3) he can try to ride out this whole embarrassment, and hope that relatively few swing voters take notice.

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