A Spork in the Drawer

And Now...

...St. John more-or-less endorses the Obama/Maliki Iraq timetable. From 100 years to 16-months (or less).

If anybody can find any coherence in McCain's campaign please let me know.

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ADDED: Atrios turns this into a pithy syllogism.

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For Some Reason This Made Me Giggle

The WaPo's "Squeaky Wheels" Krauthammer can't hide his disgust with the American electorate:

Obama was likely to be president anyway. He is likelier now still. Moreover, he not only agrees with Maliki on minimizing the U.S. role in postwar Iraq. He now owes him. That's why Maliki voted for Obama, casting the earliest and most ostentatious absentee ballot of this presidential election.

It practically drips from the paragraph.

(And there's no point in actually reading the column because, well, it's Krauthammer.)

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In Denial

From JMM:

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And Thus It Begins

Now that the Iraqi government has indisputedly endorsed Barack Obama's 19-month time table the wingnuts have now started calling PM Nuri al-Maliki an Iranian stooge.

Never let it be said that the rightists can't turn on a dime.

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ADDED: Grok this from the NRO's John Derbyshire:

We should tell Maliki, loudly and in public, that he owes his job to us, and that further prosecution of our military operations in his country will be conducted with regard only to U.S. interests, as determined in consensus by our established domestic political processes. And if he doesn't like that, he can go to hell.

Pop some corn 'cuz this is going to get even more fun!

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It's Good For The Republicans!

Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki endorses Barack Obama's plan for removing troops from that country and wingnut Rep. Roy Blunt says:

"Maliki's comments indicate that suddenly we've got a stronger government there," Blunt, of Missouri, said on CNN's "Late Edition." "I wonder how that happened."

You have to hand it to the Repubs: No matter what happens they spin it into a victory for themselves. And a credulous media laps it up.

Oh, and about that "walkback" from the endorsement? NYT:

Scott M. Stanzel, a White House spokesman with President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., said that embassy officials explained to the Iraqis how the interview in Der Spiegel was being interpreted, given that it came just a day after the two governments announced an agreement over American troops.

“The Iraqis were not aware and wanted to correct it,” he said.

Gosh, Scott, are you saying that al-Maliki and the Iraqis are stupid? Sure sounds like it. No doubt the Iraqis won't be insulted at all.

But I'm sure that it's good for the Republicans!

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Down The Memory Hole

Yesterday CNN reported that the White House had accidentally sent out a release featuring the Reuters story about Iraqi PM Nuri-al Maliki's endorsement of Obama's 16-month troop pullout plan. The CNN story began:

al-Maliki praised Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan in a newspaper report Saturday. CRAWFORD, TX (CNN) – An embarrassing slip up for the White House press office Saturday, when an aide hit the wrong button and mistakenly sent to the news media a Reuters article saying Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki backs presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama'

I had to pull that quote from my feedreader's cache because today:

UPDATE: CNN has reposted the story elsewhere.

Good job, Liberal Media!

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Brutal But Fair

The NYT's Frank Rich looks at St. John's economic proposals and finds them somewhat lacking:

Mr. McCain’s fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated on video by whining about “a nation of whiners.” The McCain-Gramm bond, dating back 15 years, is more scandalous than Mr. Obama’s connection with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. McCain has been so dependent on Mr. Gramm for economic policy that he sent him to newspaper editorial board meetings, no doubt to correct the candidate’s numbers much as Joe Lieberman cleans up after his confusions of Sunni and Shia.

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The term flip-flopping doesn’t do justice to Mr. McCain’s self-contradictory economic pronouncements because that implies there’s some rational, if hypocritical, logic at work. What he serves up instead is plain old incoherence, as if he were compulsively consulting one of those old Magic 8 Balls. In a single 24-hour period in April, Mr. McCain went from saying there’s been “great economic progress” during the Bush presidency to saying “Americans are not better off than they were eight years ago.” He reversed his initial condemnation of mortgage bailouts in just two weeks.

Rich goes on to discuss the crew of incompetents - think Carly Fiorina - and crazies - think Phil Gramm - who advise McCain on economic issues.

Given that the economy seems to be circling the drain one would think that McCain's proposals - such as they are - would be getting more scrutiny. But that would presume that we had a "news" media that wasn't too busy enjoying a barbecue at Casa Maverick.

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Speaking of St. John and scrutiny, you would also think that yesterday's endorsement of Obama's plan for Iraq by Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki would be big news. But as Steve Benen notes the major dailies have "buried the lede". Given that this pronouncement destroys McCain's whole reason for being - and prompts one Republican strategist to declare, "We're fucked" - this by all rights should be the end of St. John's White House ambitions. But his "base" is doing a good job of protecting him. As usual.

(As a side note, the expected walk-back of al-Maliki's statement - it was a mistranslation! - was issued by the US military's Central Command (2nd. update). Why on Earth would CentCom be releasing Iraqi government statements?)

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Whoops!

Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki thinks that Obama's 16-month timeline is the bestest.

St. John responds:

I don't think that this is what George was looking for when he came up with the "time horizon".

Or should that be "event horizon"?

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Sovereign

Time asks:

Has Maliki Turned on the US?

Heavens! The presumptuousness of a sovereign nation demanding to be sovereign! Or should that be "sovereign"? Needless to say, Dick and George are unimpressed as is St. John.

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Throw Them All Out

So Iraqi "Prime Minister" Nuri al-Maliki is upset that the powerful and connected mercenary outfit Blackwater USA has killed innocent civilians:

Several violent episodes involving Blackwater have infuriated Iraqi officials. An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said the decision meant Blackwater "cannot work in Iraq any longer."

"Blackwater has made many mistakes resulting in other deaths, but this is the last and the biggest mistake. This is unjustified," Khalaf said. "Security contracts do not allow them to shoot people randomly. They are here to protect personnel, not shoot people without reason."

None of this should be surprising. Blackwater and other mercenary providers essentially operate under no laws. And let's remember that it was the killing of four Blackwater mercs that led to razing of Fallujah.

I agree with Larry Johnson that Blackwater isn't going anywhere. Indeed, the Iraqi "government" has already started backing off.

Throw them all out. If the US military is unable to undertake missions without the use of mercenaries then the US government had better start rethinking a few things.

John Amato has video of what appears to be "contractors" shooting up Iraqi civilians. And I highly recommend Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Blackwater is much more frightening than you might think.

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Even al-Maliki Doesn't Like Him

Baghdad:

The Iraqi leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, failed to appear at a news conference and avoided any public comment. He left the government’s response to an official spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, who gave what amounted to a backhanded approval of the troop increase and emphasized that Iraqis, not Americans, would set the future course in the war.

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“The plan can be developed according to the needs,” Mr. Dabbagh said. Then he added tartly, “What is suitable for our conditions in Iraq is what we decide, not what others decide for us.”

Word on the street is that Laura won't look him in the eye anymore.

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