Shaun Mullen discusses the ramifications for McCain’s of McCain’s argument here. Michael Stickings rounds up commentary by bloggers here. This piece rounds up related quotes and commentary, including a couple of fairly lame counterjabs from the McCain-supporting (or Obama-dissing) side which prove to be fairly easily seen off. After all, McCain’s whole argument against Obama’s position is founded on a pile of yesterday’s news clippings.

Initially, the Iraqi government denied that Maliki had intended to endorse Obama’s plan.  Now it seems that Maliki is endorsing Obama’s plan.

[A] statement issued by Obama’s congressional delegation, including Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), said that Maliki is now serious about demanding a time frame for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Iraqis want an aspirational timeline, with a clear date, for the redeployment of American combat forces," the statement said. "Prime Minister Maliki told us that while the Iraqi people deeply appreciate the sacrifices of American soldiers, they do not want an open-ended presence of U.S. combat forces." (Chi-Tribune)

According to The Chicago Tribune, Maliki has  apparently  told Obama ‘he hopes the troops will go home "by the end of
2010," according to Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, marking the first time the Iraqi government has specified a time limit on the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq.’ (Chi-Tribune)

As noted elsewhere, this timetable is notably cognate with Obama’s own aspirational 16-month timeline. (NYT) 

Obama has of course repeatedly said that the deadline is aspirational, not rigid.  He has said that he does not intend either to ignore conditions on the ground or to allow recommendations of military commanders to completely determine his withdrawal decisions. (NYT)  In other words, if he is elected, he intends to act as Commander-in-Chief from a broader perspective than would be available to a military commander on the ground.

Obama said that in his meeting with Petraeus, the general discussed his "deep concerns" about "a timetable that doesn’t take into account what they anticipate might be a change in conditions."

"My job is to think about the national security interests as a whole and to weigh and balance risks in Afghanistan and Iraq," Obama said. "Their job is just to get the job done here, and I completely understand that….

Speaking about his support for a timetable for troop withdrawal, Obama said he wasn’t changing his position by saying he would take into account the assessment of military commanders on the ground.

"What I will refuse to do is to get boxed in into what I consider two false choices," he said. "Either I have a rigid timeline, come hell or high water, and I am blind to anything that happens in the intervening 16 months, or, alternatively, I am completely deferring to whatever the commanders on the ground say, which is what George Bush says he’s doing, in which case I’m not doing my job as commander in chief. I’m essentially, simply rubber-stamping decisions that are made
on the ground. (ABC News; emphasis added)

Good for him, for calling out the faulty construction of the dilemma on which McCain is desperately trying to impale him.

In the meantime, even the Bush administration ‘has signaled a willingness to work with the Iraqis on their desire to begin setting at least a general “time horizon” [i.e., a timetable] for reducing the American military presence.’(NYT) 

Only McCain thinks that there’s no need to discuss timetables. And as far as I can see—and as I’ve said before—he’s set up way too many fallbacks—’conditions on the ground,’ ‘victory,’ ‘honor’—for me to feel comfortable that he is committed to leaving at all. Obama can’t guarantee 16 months; of course he can’t. But at least he’s willing to make a start. As far as I can tell, conditions for McCain may never be right. I mean, come on: who knows when we will have accrued sufficient ‘victory’ and ‘honor’ to allow us to satisfy him, conditions on the ground or no conditions on the ground?

As to Obama’s so-called ‘luck’ in drawing the apparent support of the Maliki government, Matt Yglesias writes:

There’s no denying that good fortune played a role here, but one does need to consider the possibility that Obama got "lucky" here because he and his team, unlike John McCain and his team, aren’t driven by hubrisand neo-imperial fantasies.Maliki doesn’t like the McCain plan for open-ended occupation because it’s not politically tenable in Iraq. And one reason Obama and other progressives have long opposed open-ended occupation is precisely because we realized that it’s not politically tenable in Iraq. Obama got "lucky" with the timing (or, rather, Maliki seems to have decided to help him out) but in an important sense what carried the day here was that Obama’s policy is sensitive to realities in Iraq in a way that
McCain’s isn’t.

Meanwhile, as Obama polishes up his foreign policy credentials, McCain is busy being ‘blistering’ on the subject of Obama’s lack of military experience (WaPo).  Oh, so now the GOP candidate thinks experience matters.

McCain’s team won’t shut up about the surge and Obama’s opposition to it (which he admits and which he concedes he did not anticipate would be successful).   Here’s McCain, who doesn’t have anything else but the surge that he can talk about:

Speaking to a small crowd in Maine on Monday, McCain spoke about the success of the surge. "He said [the surge] would fail and he refuses to this day to acknowledge it’s succeeded. And my friends, that’s what judgment is about. That’s why I’m qualified to lead and I don’t need any on the job training," McCain said to applause.  (ABC News)

It’s not an issue for me because I pretty much agree with Obama about this:

…Obama would not attribute the decreased violence entirely to the troop surge, which he opposed, instead saying that it was the result of "political factors inside Iraq that came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not
occurred, my assessment would be correct. … The point I was making at the time was the political dynamic was the driving force in that sectarian violence." (ABC News)

This has got some of the Cornerites upset, it appears.  Andy McCarthy (via Kevin Drum) said:

Does Obama think the Sunni Awakening and the Shia militia stand-down are somehow separate developments from the surge and the brilliant performance of American forces?  If he really thinks that, it’s dumb.

To which Drum riposted:

Hmmm.  Let’s roll the tape:

• February 2006: Muqtada al-Sadr orders an end to execution-style killings by Mahdi Army death squads.

• August 2006: Sadr announces a broad ceasefire, which he has maintained ever since.

• September 2006: The Sunni Awakening begins. Tribal leaders, first in Anbar and later in other provinces,
  start fighting back against al-Qaeda insurgents.

• March 2007: The surge begins.

Say what you will about the surge, which does indeed deserve a share of the credit for reducing violence and increasing
security in Baghdad. But it pretty obviously wasn’t related to either the Shia militia stand-down or the Sunni Awakening, since both those things began before Petraeus took over in Iraq and before the surge was even a gleam in George Bush’s eye. American troops played a role in the Sadr ceasefire and (especially) the Awakening, but the surge itself didn’t — and without them, the surge would certainly have failed.

Obama has it exactly right.

FYI, re: Drum’s chronology, TMV’s Elrod noted:

Kevin Drum got part of his chronology wrong. The Sadr ceasefire was in August 2007, not August 2006. But it was a response to intra-Shi’ite fighting in Najaf and Karbala and not to US troops. Sadly, his thugs had already done their ethnic cleansing by August 2007.

Elrod discusses the chronology of the surge in an article posted here and John McCain’s possibly deliberate distortion of the chronology here.

And as Marc Ambinder writes, it’s kind of hard to argue that McCain has been more right about Iraq than Obama. 

A thought for the day: the political class has determined that Barack Obama was right about the Iraq war and that John McCain was right about the Surge. Does one right trump another? Or, as the war re-polarizes along party lines, do they cancel each other out?

And it’s clear that the Iraqi government wants U.S. troops out more quickly than John McCain does, whilst U.S. generals want to send troops home more slowly than Obama does. Who trumps who?

Even Jonah Goldberg doesn’t think McCain’s desperate chant that Obama was wrong about the surge is going to be a useful strategy or convince anyone that McCain’s position is the right position now. If you go back far enough–as Ambinder argues agove—you could argue (as I would) that Obama was more right than McCain about the need to have the war in the first place.

Finally, as Michael Grunwald points out, the Bush administration’s recent policy shifts seem tacitly to concede that Obama’s position is far stronger and also more pragmatic under currently prevailing conditions:

Last week, the McCain campaign’s case against Barack Obama went something like this: He’s irresponsible when it comes to Iraq, naive when it comes to Iran, and a big-government liberal when it comes to the economy. But now Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has more or less endorsed Obama’s plan to withdraw from Iraq, forcing McCain to argue that Maliki didn’t really mean it, and even the Bush administration has accepted a "time horizon" for withdrawal, if not a precise "timetable." The Bush administration has also engaged in some diplomatic outreach with Iran, just as Obama has recommended, a severe blow to McCain’s efforts to portray Obama’s willingness to talk as appeasement…..

It was one thing when McCain was framing the election as a monumental decision of victory versus surrender; time horizon versus timetable is going to be a tougher sell. (Time Magazine)

CROSS-POSTED AT BUCK NAKED POLITICS