McCain camp: What Iraqi leaders say is irrelevant to Iraqi policy

I guess McCain decided to go the “we’re staying whether the Iraqis like it or not” route:

“His domestic politics require him to be for us getting out,” said a senior McCain campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The military says ‘conditions based’ and Maliki said ‘conditions based’ yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders.”

So let’s recap:

1. We won’t stay in Iraq if they tell us to leave, but if they tell us to leave, they don’t really mean it since “domestic politics” require the Iraqi’s to say they want us to leave.  Well, isn’t that convenient.  Especially since Maliki hardly had to go out of his way to agree with Obama.
2. Since we say “conditions based” and Maliki says “conditions based” then he actually agreed with us.  You should just ignore all that other stuff he said.
3. What Iraqi leaders say is irrelevant to what we should do in Iraq.  In other words, we should do whatever the hell we want and to hell with Iraqi sovereignty

Nice.

Update

The Obama campaign also added this:

“So given that al-Maliki said today that it’s time for an official timetable and that Obama “is right when he talks about 16 months,” will McCain honor that commitment and call for withdrawal or change his position that we should leave Iraq if asked?”

I guess we should look at recap point #1 for the answer to that.

Knee-jerking

You can tell who the knee-jerk anti-Hillary people are by seeing who posted reactionary blog posts to the news that some Hillary people registered HRC2012.com without listing the obvious reasons why they might do so (namely, registering it so other people like, say, the PUMAs, can’t).

al Maliki: 16 month redeployment is cool with us

I think Josh Marshall is right: how, exactly, can McCain argue against Obama’s plan when the Prime Minister of Iraq (the guy with the actual power) himself has essentially endorsed it?  At least without saying something stupid like the President of Iraq doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or saying that we should stay over the objections of the Iraqis, or that al Maliki supports “American defeat.”  I just don’t see where the opening is.

I guess McCain could say something like “I respect the opinion of Prime Minister al Maliki, but I believe that a 16 month redeployment is reckless and is tantamount to American defeat,” but how is that different from saying “al Maliki, STFU and listen to McCain who really knows what you want”?  Really, try to come up with a reasonse which doesn’t say that either al Maliki doesn’t know what he’s talking about, is dumb, is lying, or supports American defeat.  It’s a tough job.

If the argument is what’s best for the Iraqi’s, and the Prime Minister of Iraq said that Obama’s plan is what’s best for them, how exactly can you argue that it isn’t?