Iraq Prime Minister Maliki Endorses Obama Withdrawal Plan
John McCain and George Bush feel that it would be surrender to pull troops out of Iraq. Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister al-Maliki has demanded that the Bush Administration accept a timetable for troop withdrawal. His recent interview with the German press amounted to an endorsement of Senator Barack Obama’s plan to pull out of Iraq. This leaves John McCain looking rather silly. Americans want out, the Iraqi’s want us out, and most of the free world wants us to get out (and help lower oil prices). John and George are stuck with yesterday’s policy, 3,000 war dead, a trillion dollars of debt and un-cooperative stooges.
New York Times, July 19th 2008
Sarah Wheaton
The policies and whims of American leaders have played a major role in politics in Iraq and elsewhere. And now, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, dipped his toes in the United States’ race for the White House. Mr. Maliki essentially endorsed Senator Barack Obama’s plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel.
“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months,” Mr. Maliki said, according to the magazine’s online English edition. “That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”
Naturally, Mr. Maliki did not want to imply he was backing one candidate over another in a foreign election:
“Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business,” he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems.”
The timing could not be better for Mr. Obama, who began the first leg of his foreign trip in Kabul earlier today, with a stop in Iraq expected later. Mr. Maliki’s comments were published just a day after President Bush agreed to a “general time horizon” for withdrawing troops from Iraq.