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Iraqi PM Maliki Supports Barack Obama's Plan for Withdrawal

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Iraq Leader Maliki Supports Obama's Withdrawal Plans

'AS SOON AS POSSIBLE'
Iraq Leader Maliki Supports Obama's Withdrawal Plans
In an interview with SPIEGEL, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Barack Obama's 16 timeframe for a withdrawal from Iraq is the right one.

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: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."
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Excuse me, I believe you mean "Arbitrary Timetable for Surrender and Embiggen Our Enemies".
 
Still nobody should trust Maliki too much? Isn"t Maliki a shia? and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a shia muslim? I really hope that they are not trying to play games. Thank god that the president in Iraq is a sunni muslim. Ahmadinejads master Khomeini did pretty bad things to sunni muslims.
 
moon1969 said:
Still nobody should trust Maliki too much? Isn"t Maliki a shia? and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a shia muslim? I really hope that they are not trying to play games. Thank god that the president in Iraq is a sunni muslim. Ahmadinejads master Khomeini did pretty bad things to sunni muslims.
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For better or for worse, the US decided that Iraq, a majority Shia country, should be a democracy rather than ruled by a Sunni strongman. Maliki is the democratically elected leader of Iraq. It seems we have to trust Maliki or Iraq sovereignty and democracy is a joke.
 
Well, so much for that story:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hasn't endorsed any specific plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, a government spokesman said, a day after a magazine report that he backed Barack Obama's proposal.

Al-Maliki supports a ``general vision'' of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and has not backed a plan by Obama, the presumptive U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, for a 16- month withdrawal window, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an e-mailed statement in Baghdad today.
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If I was Iraqi, I would want us gone tomorrow. Its their country. We are a foreign occupying force. I would back any withdrawal plan. Regardless of the current he-said she-said about whether or not Maliki actually backs this specific plan.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071803152.html

Iraqis Differ on Obama's Plans

... snip ...

"Iraq will be in hell, and we will find ourselves at the gates of civil war," said Maied Rashed al-Nuaemi, a provincial council member in Mosul, a city in northern Iraq where Iraqi forces are battling the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. "The American presence in Iraq is the safety valve to keep this country quiet. If they withdraw, that will lead to calamity."

But Mosul's deputy governor said he feels otherwise. "The U.S. presence in Iraq is useful now, but if the security situation gets better, I think it's not necessary to keep all these big numbers of soldiers here," Khasru Koraan said.

... snip ...

In polls, a majority of Iraqis say they want U.S. forces to leave, but only a minority say they want the forces to leave immediately.

Some of the more than two dozen Iraqis interviewed for this article said Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is naive in wanting to withdraw U.S. combat troops by the summer of 2010. Others viewed his position as a political calculation to win votes from a populace tired of war.

"I think that Obama talks more than what he can accomplish, because reality differs from promises and dreams," said Um Mohammed, 60, an engineer in Baghdad who declined to give her full name. "I think it is just a camouflage to reach the presidential chair. It's a way to satisfy the American people and the American mothers."

Mohammed Sulaiman, 56, a retired government employee in Baghdad, said: "The proposal of Obama to pull out the troops by summer 2010 is foolish. If the United States withdraws from Iraq, I think its credibility among the international countries would collapse."

Most Iraqis interviewed appeared wary of setting a specific timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops

... snip ...

"We need more training, as well as new and developed weapons and supplies. We also need modern and developed technology. The U.S. forces should withdraw gradually so our Iraqi forces can fill the gaps that the American forces will leave," said Brig. Gen. Najim Abdullah, spokesman for the Iraqi National Police. "As to a timetable, I don't think we should specify it now, because it is related to the logistical support and the ability of our Iraqi forces to handle their responsibility."

Several Iraqi army commanders said the country's security forces would not be ready to stand on their own for at least several years.

... snip ...

"We hope they will stay until 2020," said Brig. Gen. Bilal al-Dayni, a commander in the southern city of Basra, where about 30,000 Iraqi soldiers patrol the streets after a major offensive in March against extremist militias.
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BeAChooser said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071803152.html
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You could cut the irony with a knife.



In the Anbar city of Fallujah, Khalid al-Dulaimi, a commander of U.S.-backed neighborhood patrols that have turned against Sunni extremists, said Sunnis like him welcome Obama because their community, once dominant under Saddam Hussein, had been marginalized.

"We hope that he is going to look at things from the right angle," Dulaimi said. "We Sunnis prefer him to McCain, because McCain is the other face of Bush, and we don't want another Bush."
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The LA Times appear to believe it was an accurate translation of what Maliki said.

Maliki's office, suddenly finding him thrust smack in the middle of the U.S. campaign, issued a somewhat half-hearted demurral, insisting something got lost in the translation of what he said.

But an audio recording of his comment, vetted by the New York Times, showed that Der Spiegel essentially got it right. And in the initial readout from Obama's visit today with Maliki in Baghdad, the Associated Press reported that the Iraqi government would like to see American combat units gone at some point in 2010 -- a timeframe, the story noted, that "falls within the 16-month withdrawal plan proposed by Obama." [UPDATE: The L.A. Times has the story, as well.]
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As does the New York Times.

The statement, which was distributed to media organizations by the American military early on Sunday, said Mr. Maliki’s words had been “misunderstood and mistranslated,” but it failed to cite specifics.

“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.”

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “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.”

He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/us/politics/21obama.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=zeleny&st=cse&oref=slogin
 
So, according to Mr. Maliki own words, Obama's timeframe (give or take a little) "could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq".

This has got to be eating at McCain and the Republicans big time. :D
 
The media has exploded with the question: 'What was McCain thinking?', when he was previously calling for Obama to travel to Iraq.

Short of Obama knawing off the neck of a US soldier after praying to Mecca, there is little that can diminish this as being the mother of all publicity victories for the senator from Illinois.

Whilst he shakes hands with the Iraqi PM after looking like he just climbed out of a fully conditioned washing machine, McCain squints up at the camera in his golfing shirt, acting like the killjoy grandfather.
 
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The translator of al-Maliki's comments for Der Speigel works for al-Maliki.

Diplomats from the United States Embassy in Baghdad spoke to Mr. Maliki’s advisers on Saturday, said an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss what he called diplomatic communications. After that, the government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, issued a statement casting doubt on the magazine’s rendering of the interview.

The statement, which was distributed to media organizations by the American military early on Sunday, said Mr. Maliki’s words had been “misunderstood and mistranslated,” but it failed to cite specifics.

“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.”

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.
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Wow. Just wow.
 
Pookster said:
This has got to be eating at McCain and the Republicans big time.
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Not really. You just haven't asked Obama to fill in the rest of the details. How many Americans is he going to leave in Iraq and for how long? What will they be doing, exactly. Who will protect them? And won't the presence of those Americans cause the same problems Democrats claimed the American presence was causing before? And if things go south in Iraq during Obama's withdrawal, will Obama delay the withdrawal? Yes or No? When asked this question, he's studiously avoided answering it. Yet he's made it very clear on several occasions that he withdraw regardless of what the war situation is in Iraq. Are you Democrats prepared to see a resurgence of al-Qaeda, Iranian backed militias and sectarian violence in Iraq? Yes or no? Is Iraq a front in the WOT or not? Yes or no? If only a couple brigades are all Obama is talking about sending to Afghanistan, why the urgency in withdrawing all the rest of them from Iraq ... if the result may be loss of all that's been gained the last year and a half?

You see, Pookster, there are a lot of questions that you and media don't seem to want to ask Obama. Because all that is important to you is winning the coming election ... not the War On Terror. And the proof that Obama thinks the same way is found in the interview Obama did after his Iraqi visit where when asked if knowing all we know now if he'd have been for the surge in January 2007, Obama answered "no". He's Stuck On Stupid. :D
 
BeAChooser said:
Not really. You just haven't asked Obama to fill in the rest of the details. How many Americans is he going to leave in Iraq and for how long? What will they be doing, exactly. Who will protect them? And won't the presence of those Americans cause the same problems Democrats claimed the American presence was causing before? And if things go south in Iraq during Obama's withdrawal, will Obama delay the withdrawal? Yes or No? When asked this question, he's studiously avoided answering it. Yet he's made it very clear on several occasions that he withdraw regardless of what the war situation is in Iraq. Are you Democrats prepared to see a resurgence of al-Qaeda, Iranian backed militias and sectarian violence in Iraq? Yes or no? Is Iraq a front in the WOT or not? Yes or no? If only a couple brigades are all Obama is talking about sending to Afghanistan, why the urgency in withdrawing all the rest of them from Iraq ... if the result may be loss of all that's been gained the last year and a half?

You see, Pookster, there are a lot of questions that you and media don't seem to want to ask Obama. Because all that is important to you is winning the coming election ... not the War On Terror. And the proof that Obama thinks the same way is found in the interview Obama did after his Iraqi visit where when asked if knowing all we know now if he'd have been for the surge in January 2007, Obama answered "no". He's Stuck On Stupid. :D
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I figured it was eating at you in particular. :D
 
If it isn't eating away at McCain that Maliki actually said what he originally said, this picture will..

539w.jpg
 
Undesired Walrus said:
If it isn't eating away at McCain that Maliki actually said what he originally said, this picture will..

[qimg]http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p297/ldl21/539w.jpg[/qimg]
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McCain may get a stomach ulcer before Obama's trip is over.
 
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