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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Continuing the Maliki/Obama./withdrawal story

If you haven't, you should probably read the next post first, and then come back to this one.

Two additions to the thread. The AP's Robert Reid has a pretty good analysis of how Maliki is playing this against the Bush administration.

And, Now it comes out that al-Dabbagh's clarification of Maliki's statement came after "a call to the prime minister's office from U.S. government officials in Iraq."

(Once again, why are US military and non-political officials intervening in this largely political issue?)

Later: One more bit. Now it comes out that the interpreter who supposedly "mistranslated" was Maliki's translator.

8 Comments:

  • Maybe al-Dabbagh should clarify the clarification.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:43 PM  

  • Clearly.

    By Blogger -epm, at 8:16 PM  

  • I wonder if this story will have legs coming out of the weekend. Given Obama's trip, Iraq, iran, and the Middle East will be topical news again and this fits into that.

    By Blogger -epm, at 8:20 PM  

  • EPM, I think it will. This is one of those items that hits at the core of a candidate's "character."

    McCain identified himself with Iraq over everything else, so, I think it'll hang around.

    .....

    Anon, He issued the statement the US "asked" him to, and we haven't heard another word from him, have we? Not like Sunday's a day off there.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 11:03 PM  

  • This is precious. From the link:

    "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."

    We are now expected to believe that Maliki's own interpreter "mistranslated him", despite being confirmed by Der Spiegel and the NYT directly from an audio recording.

    I've yet to see anything saying that Maliki himself is backing away from the statements.
    As per usual, it is the cover up that looks worse than the initial incident.

    Copious amounts of Kool-Aid will be needed for Republicans to get over this. Any predictions on what the eventual talking point will be?

    By Blogger Todd Dugdale , at 11:09 PM  

  • Definitely. And in a country where mistakes in politics mean death, Maliki is in the habit of having a poor translator.

    If Maliki wanted out of this, he could quickly get out.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 5:38 AM  

  • By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:20 PM  

  • By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:56 PM  

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