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Squandering Those Few Shreds Of Credibility

July 21st, 2008
By SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist

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The kerfuffle over whether Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki explicitly endorsed Barack Obama’s Iraq troop withdrawal plan will pass quickly, but it is worth noting before it does that the Bush administration just can’t help but squander what few shreds of credbility it still has left.

In case you missed it, Al-Maliki tokld Der Spiegel over the weekend that he found much to like in Obama’s position. This provoked an uproar at the White House, which already finds itself in the hugely uncomfortable position of having to grudgingly concede that American troops will have to start leaving Iraq sooner rather than later — and not whenever it damned well pleases President Bush or his handmaiden, John McCain.

The intitial response from Washington predictably was that Al-Maliki’s remarks had been mistranslated, but Der Spiegel’s audio tape in fact shows that he said in Arabic that:

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. . . . Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.

But all you really need to know is that the only “retraction” of the statement came not from Baghdad, but from the military press office of the occupying power.

Image: ABC News photo illustration



This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 6:34 am and is filed under Withdrawal, Bush Administration, Iraq War, Nouri al-Maliki, John McCain, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 7 Comments

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    , but from the military press office of the occupying power.

    Now if we could just get Obama and his disciples to understand that we are an Occupying power in AFghanistan too.
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    neo, but we do have a legitimate reason to be in Afghanistan. You do remember 911 don't you? The Taliban and alQaeda were responsible for that attack. You want they should go free? IMO we should round them all up and kill them. They attacked us, so I have nothing at all against killing them
    • ^
    • v
    For Iraq, the "surge" has provided a relative peace. I'm not convinced it's a permanent thing and it's a little early to be claiming victory. The debate on the surge wasn't if it'd provide a level of security. The debate was if it'd provide a enough security for political reconciliations amongst the Kurds, Sunni and Shiite and form a unity Iraqi government. Has the Iraqi government meet those political goals? Have the Sunnis, Kurds, and Shiites come together in a stable unity government? I'm not sure.

    So I'm with Neocon, why not "Declare Victory" and leave while the getting is good?

    As for Afghanistan, we had a reason to be there as Timr said and we dropped the ball when GWB invaded Iraq. I do believe we should finish up in Afghanistan by finishing off as much of the Taliban and AQ we can get our hands on.
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    *squawk* Bush is bad! Bad, bad! *squawk* US troops out of Iraq as soon as possible! *squawwwwk*

    The real issue here is Obama's trip _plus_ how Obama looks on Iraq in the eyes of the US public versus McCain, who can rightly say what Rambie said,

    "My friends,

    the 'surge' has provided a relative peace.

    In fact, the surge has provided the peace to enable Obama to be comfortable visiting Iraq now, even though I visited it before the surge; I was not afraid.
    The surge is working, my friends [tm]. It's working."

    I still say the public will like Obama more as a candidate but at least McCain can make that "relative peace" claim truthfully.

    * * *

    "why not "Declare Victory" and leave while the getting is good [...] we should finish up in Afghanistan by finishing off as much of the Taliban and AQ we can get our hands on"

    Agreed, but we should finish off a lot of terrorists in Iraq before we go. If we could only channel them somehow into a single location or handful of locations, then it could be done if we were willing to fight and win.
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    So now the Obama crowd is turning into the War mongers. Its just that they have a different country to blow up and kill stuff.

    How convienent for Barak Obama and the democrats. They can have their war now too.

    I'm curious though. Why do we want to KILL people and blow stuff up in Afghanistan but not KILL people or BLOW stuff up in Iraq?

    Do I want to get Bin Laden? Not particularly. He was just the figurehead. I think Al Quaida has suffered quite a bit for their activity. Now we need to pull out and pay for it.

    Al Quaida spent 1 million and the Us Spend 1 trillion......pretty good return for their buck dont cha think?

    Now Obama is being the war monger and wanting to go escalate AFghanistan to prove he has a set of balls.
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    DLS, there is still time to track down more "terrorists" in Iraq if necessary.

    Neocon: Afghanistan isn't a "war for the democrats", that war was to go after AQ, the Taliban, and yes Bin Laden. Where's your evidence he was just a "figure head" behind 9/11?

    We should never have diverted our efforts on Iraq. That was just GWB chest thumping or bowing to the oil industry if you believe the conspiracy theorists.

    Talk about a catch-22! The "democrats" were cowards for NOT wanting to invade Iraq and now they are "Warmongers" for wanting to help stabilize Afghanistan, the war that President Bush ignored for years.

    You can't have it both ways Neocon... if the Democrats are Warmongers now then the Republicans must be the Cowards.

    BTW, Neocon, I think you missed my last comment to you last night in this thread: http://themoderatevoice.com/places/europe/franc...
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    No the democrats were not cowards. They were the only ones at the time who had half a brain in their heads even though they didnt realize it at the time.

    Where is your proof OBL WAS behind the planning? Everything Ive read said he just gave the go ahead and the planning was done by someone else.

    I continually heard that the war on crime is a police problem and not a military problem. I mean why are we sending 200k men to get a couple thousand terrorists?

    We've been fighting this war so long we have forgotten why we are even in Afghanistan. It was to break up the camps of the terrorists whom the Taliban was protecting. Now its an occupation.

    Lets get real about the truth for a change.
    Where is our justification for Occupying Afghanistan???? How many resolutions do we have allowing us to BE INSIDE AFGHANISTAN?
 
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