McCain: Maliki Doesn’t Really Want Timetables

By Eric on July 21, 2008

A couple weeks ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he wants to negotiate a timeline for the withdrawal of American troops, a position that puts him in agreement with Barack Obama’s plan for phased withdrawal from Iraq. The Bush Administration has even agreed to “time horizons”–which are apparently not the same as timetables even though they accomplish essentially the same thing–leaving John McCain as the only person who wants us to stay in Iraq. And what do Republicans do when they’re backed into a lonely corner on an unpopular issue?

Make shit up.

In a conference called just now with reporters, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann responded to a question about Malik’s comments by citing “the reaction from the Iraqi government, which made it clear that there were apparently some translation problems in the quote, that’s not the position of the prime minister.”

“I certainly can’t believe that the Obama campaign would take a quote that’s already been clarified out of context, and try to hang their Iraq policy on that,” Scheunemann later added.

Of course, the NYT has independently verified Maliki’s comments, but the McCain campaign’s Iraq strategy still seems to be one of lying to the media and the American people. Unfortunately, the way things are going, it seems like their lies could work.

You can listen to the audio of the McCain campaign conference call here. (Warning: 17.5 MB WAV file.)

• You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments

There are 2 responses to “McCain: Maliki Doesn’t Really Want Timetables”

1. [...] McCain campaign, translate [...]

   —crazydrumguy | readblog | » Shorter Nouri al-Maliki on July 22, 2008 at 6:22 am

2. [...] imploding over its self-appointed “best” issue, the War in Iraq. First, there was the lost in translation nonsense, then the was the Iraq-Pakistan border conflict, and now we get this: The major Sunni sheik who [...]

   —crazydrumguy | readblog | » McCain Proves the Surge Isn’t Working on July 24, 2008 at 6:22 am