A German magazine quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as saying that he backed a proposal by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months.
"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months," he said in an interview with Der Spiegel that was released Saturday.
"That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes," he said.
But a spokesman for al-Maliki said his remarks "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately."
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the possibility of troop withdrawal was based on the continuance of security improvements, echoing statements that the White House made Friday after a meeting between al-Maliki and U.S. President Bush.
The prime minister was widely quoted as saying that in the negotiations with the Americans on a Status of Forces Agreement to regulate the US troop presence from next year, “the direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their evacuation, or a memorandum of understanding on a timetable for their withdrawal”.
That was the version of Mr Maliki’s remarks put out in writing by his office in Baghdad.
It was widely circulated by the news media, and caught much attention, including that of Mr Obama.
There is only one problem. It is not what Mr Maliki actually said. … What he actually said was: “The direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their evacuation, or a memorandum of understanding on programming their presence.”
Ooww, Sorry Barack -- Your NYTimes editorial was based on thing but poor reporting. Nothing new there, your entire candidacy is based on poor reporting.
DKK BBC
BREAKING NEWS: Michelle’s Whitey Problem (Thread #2) New and dramatic developments. This is a heads up. I’ll post the news Monday morning by 0900 hours. Now I know why people who have seen the videotape say it is stunning. Barack’s headaches are only starting.
Earlier I posted about a rumored video of Michelle Obama giving a talk at Trinity Church. Well, here is an update with more to come this AM.
I don't know, this is the same guy who said Rove was getting indicted and we can see how that worked out. DKK
Update: I think this longer post is it, it includes this nugget: Barack may have quit his church but his religious problems are not over. Barack Obama has a Nation of Islam problem that will receive more attention in the coming days. Before Barack came on the scene, THE MAN in his political district was Louis Farrakhan DKK
I have pretty much avoided dealing with the videos of Obama's Church, but then I saw this video of Father Michael Pfleger -- it's not the one about Hillary, it is the one about whites abusing people of color and having to pay for that abuse.
I have attended many different services at many different houses of worship and they have all left me with feelings of love and hope.
Not one left me with the feeling that I was oppressed, or that there were a group of people whose desire was to do me harm -- people I should resent, hate, and oppose. Yet that is what I have seen from both Pfleger and Reverend Wright.
Almost every service I have attended left me with a passionate desire to love God, myself, and my fellow man.
"America has been raping people of color and America has to pay the price!"
Hearing Pfleger give a sermon would leave me with a different type of passion. He is a powerful speaker and I have no doubt those in attendance had a desire to take action, I'm just not sure what that action would be when hate is the message.
Watching this clip reminded me of the undercover radical mosque special in the UK, or in a sense of the mosques that stir up riots and to a milder degree the Friday Tehran services you see on the news every now and then.
This is hatred. This is the type of message that causes resentment and hatred toward those who are different then you are. The listener is resolved of their actions because they are a victim, in Pfleger and Wright's mind it is white America. In Iran and radical Muslim's case it is Israel and America, the Jews and Christians!
The similarities are striking and I just can't imagine hearing that every week or every few weeks and not absorbing and believing some of it.
Obama has to explain why he attended for 20 years, why his wife believes America is mean and not worthy of pride, and what he took from the services if it is different then what his wife appears to have taken from this church.
Things just don't add up, there is a big piece of information still missing about Barack Obama.
Here are a couple of videos that show some of the radicals I am thinking of. Some of the messages are far more extreme then those of Trinity and some seem on par with Wright and Pfleger.
Glen Beck, Extreme Agenda Exposed: Radical Islam: Terror in its own words: Dispatches - Undercover Mosque DKK
“If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful, because that I find unacceptable — the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family,” he said.
“For them to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class and I think they — most of the American people would think that as well,” he said. “I would never think of going after somebody’s spouse in a campaign.” (Hot Air)
In my post How Obama Neutered The Clintons I proposed that Obama beat Hillary (so far) by preemptively eliminating legitimate avenues of attack by redefining what was acceptable in a campaign. Well, in light of the internet rumor that there is a video of Michelle Obama speaking at church using the phrase, "whitey," I was wondering if this was an attempt to remove that tape from the game as well. It appeared to be based on an advertisement in Tennessee that called Michelle out on her claim to have not been proud of America before now, but was there more to it then that?
Remember, Michelle's comments about being proud as well as her calling America a mean country were all done on the campaign trail!
The American Thinker Blog gives a list of things that are no longer acceptable as political arguments against Obama, The Rule Book for Criticizing Obama.
