Obama Tried To Stall Gis' Iraq Withdrawal

[darrels joy]

Barack Obama Admits Undermining Negotiations in Iraq, No Headlines

Posted In: Barack Obama , MSM , Sarah Palin . By Devil's Advocate
Buzz up!

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No headlines today about Barack Obama's undermining the troop withdrawal in Iraq until he left office. No mention of his actions on television. This is the largest story since 9/11, and the mainstream media is ignoring it.

I addressed in the last two days that Barack Obama spoke with Iraqi's foreign minister about keeping troops in Iraq until after the election and not negotiating with George Bush until after November.

Well, Barack Obama's campaign responded today:

Obama’s national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri’s article bore “as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial.”

In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a “Strategic Framework Agreement” governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.

So what the spokeswoman said was 1) Everyone is lying; and 2) Barack Obama did everything he is accused of doing! He told the Iraqi government not to negotiate with the President of the United States.

Where is the McCain camp? Where is the New York Times? Where is CNN? Where is Fox News? Where is MSNBC? Where is NBC? Where is CBS? Where is ABC? Where is PBS, Where is the Washington Post?

I guess we should be concerned with whether or not the plane was sold on Ebay or to a private donor.

(source)
http://copiousdissent.blogspot.com/2...erminting.html

[darrels joy]

The only response to the article by the Obama campaign thus far has been an unnamed staffer accusing Taheri of confusing the Status of Forces agreement (which defines legal protections for U.S. military personnel and property in Iraq) with a Strategic Framework Agreement, a much broader document.

Curiously, the New York Post reports that the Obama campaign has not called the editorial department to ask for a correction or retraction of the Taheri article. The Obama campaign has also refused to respond to requests by Pajamas Media to confirm or deny the story. For the time being, let’s interpret the lack of a more forceful response by the Obama campaign to be acquiescence, and give Zebari, who has been the Iraqi foreign minister since 2003 (through Iraq’s interim, transitional, and permanent governments) some credit as a legitimate source.

If the claims in Taheri’s article are accurate, then Senator Obama is playing a dangerous and duplicitous game.

It would mean Barack Obama attempted to pressure American military commanders to make a declaration that he would have used as a political tool during his presidential campaign to undermine both his opponent and the current president, perhaps undermining the credibility of the U.S. military as an apolitical group loyal to the United States instead of political parties. It was wrong to attempt to put American commanders at war in such a predicament, where their words could be used against their sitting commander-in-chief as a political bludgeon. Either Obama did not think of that, or he was simply untroubled by the thought of abusing the careers of American commanders for political gain.

Obama would have used any timeline offered to shore up Obama’s support on the far left wing of the Democratic Party, a fringe that advocates an immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, regardless of the resulting security vacuum or the possibilities of political and security instabilities that would be the likely result.

Many in this radicalized wing, while thankfully only a fraction of the overall party, openly desire a too-quick retreat in order to secure an American defeat and a failed Iraqi state. They would tout that as a failure of the “Bush doctrine,” specifically the part that justifies preemptive war to depose foreign governments that pose a threat to the security of the United States, even if that government is not an imminent threat.

But even as Senator Obama may have been pandering to his anti-war base by trying to pressure U.S. commanders for a withdrawal date that would be used as a political tool, he was concurrently trying to keep his same core group of radicals stirred up by attempting to slow the signs of progress in Iraq by manipulating a key statistic progressive blogs and other anti-war activists keyed on the most heavily: the number of American forces in Iraq.

If American forces began to withdraw significant numbers of soldiers from Iraq , it would undermine Obama’s core campaign message that to elect anyone else would result in the continuance of a war without end. For Senator Obama to keep his base motivated, he needs Iraq to either appear that it is either failing or deadlocked. A reduction in forces prior to the 2008 presidential election could prove damaging to a core element of his platform of “change.” If “change” in Iraq occurs prior to the November elections, a substantial reason for voting for Obama is removed.

By lobbying Iraqi leaders to keep the status quo until after the U.S. presidential election, Senator Obama would have been attempting to undermine the foreign policy of a sitting president to shore up his own political base.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-...acy-in-iraq/2/

[Gimpy]

How long did it take you to find three of the most radical right-wing "blogs" in the blogosphere to try and bolster your ridiculous charges?

"Copiousdissent.blogspot.com" ....... "Yid With A Lid" ...... and "Pajamas Media"... blogspots huh? Now there's about THREE (3) of the LEAST CREDIBLE "sources" you could have ever possibly come up with.

The "Yid With A Lid" site is a radical right-wing Israeli web site who advocates the U.S. invasion of Iran for Gods sake!.........no questions asked, just go ahead and start another war where our brave young American troops can continue to die for another "neo-con" blunder. He fits right in line with that DEBUNKED "author" of the original article, Amir Teheri who also authored that "Faked Report on Iran" and is severely fact-challenged and obviously, deliberately lying through his teeth!


The "Copiousdissent.blogspot.com" states on it's site, quote....."This political blog is dedicated to informed citizens who understand the benefits of limited government, capitalism, private property rights, and plain common sense. If you disagree with any or all of the political satire on this blog, we apologize for the intellectual abuse inflicted upon you by your university professors."---end quote.


Yep, whole LOTS of "crediblity" there alright. You ARE joking, right?


And "Pajamas Media" is a conglomeration of right-wing "whackos" who are pissed off at the supposed "Liberal Media" and headed up by two of the most radical "neo-cons" on the west coast, Roger L. Simon – who is CEO/Co-Founder Pajamas Media, and Co-founder Charles Johnson a musician and "web designer" who is publisher of a extremely radical right-wing weblog called "Little Green Footballs"

Why haven't you come up with some "credible sources" instead of these ridiculously radical, right-wing squawkers of lies and misinformation.

Where are all the "credible" sources, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, BBC, Reuters, Asccociated Press, Washington Post, NYT, and ALL the other "sources" other than the right-wing rags you've mentioned?

Where is your "PROOF" to counter the charges I've leveled at the author of the original article, Amir Teheri ...............who has been DISCREDITED and DEBUNKED by nearly every major news organization on the planet?


You CAN'T refute the "evidence" I've posted about this scumbag Teheri, because every thing I've posted about him, his motives and his "inaccuracy" in reporting are the absolute FACTS!

I've got a question for you............Why do neo-con retards (like the web site originators you've "sourced" ) wear helmets? So they can live long enough after banging their heads against padded cell walls to create pointless web sites like the ones you've used as 'supporting" your ridiculous charges.. What a freakin joke!

Ya know what? Even if Obama did this (which he didn't!) it would almost be like former President Reagan and his people negotiating with Iran, telling them not to free the American Hostages they had captured until after the election against Jimmy Carter was concluded. But, it was then OK for RonnieRayGun...........right?

You folks are grasping at straws..............you might as well give up, you CAN NOT continue to use BS, lies, misinformation and deception to try and advance your "cause" without getting exposed and caught red handed.

STILL NO CIGAR!

Gimp

[darrels joy]

Anatomy Of Hussein’s Violation Of The Logan Act

September 16th, 2008 Posted By drillanwr.

We report … YOU decide.
Exhibit “A”:
OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS’ IRAQ WITHDRAWAL
by Amir Taheri - (NYPost)
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”

“However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open.” Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is “illegal,” he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the “weakened Bush administration,” Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a “realistic withdrawal date.” They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Supposing he wins, Obama’s administration wouldn’t be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.

By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.

Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.

Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.

According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.

Even then, the dates mentioned are only “notional,” making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.

Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as “a man of the Left” - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq’s liberation. Indeed, say Talabani’s advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.

Maliki’s advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator’s “political debt to the anti-war lobby” - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was “the biggest strategic blunder in US history.”

Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show “a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues.”

Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn’t want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of “pre-emptive” war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.

Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.

Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.

Exhibit “B”:
McCain’s Camp Dares The MSM To Look At And Cover This
McCain spokesman Randy Scheunemann

At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented.

It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power.

If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas.

Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq’s Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting.

The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama’s judgment and it demands an explanation.

Exhibit “C”:
Obama camp hits back at Iraq double-talk claim

Barack Obama’s White House campaign angrily denied Monday a report that he had secretly urged the Iraqis to postpone a deal to withdraw US troops until after November’s election.

In the New York Post, conservative Iranian-born columnist Amir Taheri quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying the Democrat made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July, while publicly demanding an early withdrawal.

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview, according to Taheri.

“However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open,” Zebari reportedly said.

The Republican campaign of John McCain seized on the report to accuse Obama of double-speak on Iraq, calling it an “egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas.”

But Obama’s national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri’s article bore “as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial.”

***In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a “Strategic Framework Agreement” governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.***

In the face of resistance from Bush, the Democrat has long said that any such agreement must be reviewed by the US Congress as it would tie a future administration’s hands on Iraq.

“Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations, nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades,” Morigi said.

“These outright distortions will not changes the facts — Senator Obama is the only candidate who will safely and responsibly end the war in Iraq and refocus our attention on the real threat: a resurgent Al-Qaeda and Taliban along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.”

Last Tuesday, Bush announced plans to remove 8,000 US troops from Iraq in the coming months and send 4,500 to Afghanistan by January.

Obama said the president was belatedly coming round to his own way of thinking, but also accused Bush of “tinkering around the edges” and “kicking the can down the road to the next president.”
(AFP)

I rest MY case …
http://patdollard.com/2008/09/anatom...the-logan-act/

[darrels joy]

Obama's Double-Dealing Diplomacy

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Barack Obama premised his campaign on calling for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But now he's been quietly telling Iraq "not so fast." It's part of a deceptive pattern.

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Read More: Election 2008 | Iraq

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Iraq's Foreign Minister Moshyar Zebari told the New York Post's Amir Taheri that Obama made delaying the troops' return a key theme of his talks with Iraqi leaders during his campaign stop in Baghdad last July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the U.S. elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari told Teheri, on the record.

Funny, that's not what Obama told voters. He has made an immediate pullout the cornerstone of his campaign. Taheri's report signals the Democratic standard-bearer would manipulate the war's end for political advantage and is willing to deceive voters to do it.

This in itself is reprehensible. But his secret calls also leave U.S. troops unnecessarily in harm's way. It's the kind of foreign policy meddling that serves Obama's interests over the national interest.

"Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America," Taheri reported. "To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years."

Can Obama be trusted? We ask because he's shown a pattern of secretive double-dealing with voters, not just in his talking about small town voters one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco, as Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin pointed out, but particularly in foreign affairs.

It dates back to at least February, when Obama's economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, secretly told the Canadian embassy that Obama's demagoguery against NAFTA in the primaries was just a Styrofoam-pillar bid to win the Ohio vote.

Obama's pattern of deception continued. In March, Colombian troops raided a FARC terrorist camp in Ecuador and recovered a terrorist computer belonging to a top FARC warlord, Raul Reyes.

Computer e-mails revealed that someone who knew Obama's positions had secretly met with the terrorists and assured them Obama would cut U.S. military aid under Plan Colombia and veto its free trade pact. Both are major goals of the Marxist terrorists aligned with America's enemies.

Subsequent events confirmed this. Obama did come out in favor of shutting Colombia out of free trade. More disturbingly, Obama adviser
Daniel Restrepo last week told Colombia's Radio Caracol that Obama planned to convert the military aid Colombia needs to crush terrorists into social aid programs that don't.

That's not the end of it. Now Obama is double-dealing with Iraqi officials to leave American troops in harm's way and prolong the appearance of war long enough to call it a failure and win votes.

The astonishing thing about Obama's deals is they're the very thing Democrats accused Republicans of without a shred of proof.

They accused Richard Nixon of making a secret deal with the North Vietnamese to prolong the Vietnam war enough to presumably win election in 1968.

Years later, in 1980, they accused Ronald Reagan of making a secret deal with Iranian terrorists holding U.S. diplomats hostage to win election over incumbent Jimmy Carter.

Neither of these claims, often repeated by leftist historians, has ever been proven. But the statement of Iraq's foreign minister, speaking to a leading writer on foreign policy, is considerably stronger as evidence. It signals that Obama places politics over the national interest to the extent that he would work against his own public positions to gull voters into electing him.

It's the absolute opposite of John McCain's courageous position supporting the surge in Iraq, even as politicos were warning him he'd lose the election for it. "I'd rather lose an election than lose a war," McCain said.

With Obama's promises to sit down with dictators in Venezuela, Cuba, Syria and Iran, voters have a right to ask if he's made any deals at odds with his public condemnations of them, too. Before he starts acting like president, he needs to come clean to voters and reveal his true positions.

Whatever they are, voters have a right to know.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...06456935180750

[Gimpy]

You definately need to "rest your case" alright!


It's in dire need of a LONG "rest", because you STIll haven't disproved my charges that the scumbag author Amir Teheri has been DISCREDITED and DEBUNKED by nearly every major news organization on the planet? No major news organization worth it's salt would EVER put any credence or reliabilty on anything this guys ever put into words!

So then, you've found two more right-wing web sites that you're attempting to bolster you outrageous allegations with huh?

Investor's Business Daily? ...A right-wing rag that's long been associated with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the ultra conservative Hoover Institution. They're about as "credible" as Bill O'Liely and Rush Limburger.

Your "case" is falling apart right before all our eyes!

Sorry, but STILL NO CIGAR!

Gimp

[darrels joy]

Obama Goons Threaten Amir Taheri



Now that Amir Taheri has exposed Barack Obama as a fraud who tried to interfere with American negotiations in Iraq, suddenly Obama is silent on the matter.

Though isn't it ironic that the man who promises to brings us all together has a legion of thugs who are now threatening the author?

Read the entire column by Taheri, as it's devastating to Obama. Not that any other media outlets will bother to mention it.

But this part is quite interesting. And I hope Taheri hands over the details to the authorities.

While I am encouraged by the senator's evolution, I must also appeal to him to issue a "cease and desist" plea to the battalions of his sympathizers - who have been threatening me with death and worse in the days since my article appeared.

Why does the left hate free speech so much while pretending to be guardians of it?

More on Obama-Taheri here.

[darrels joy]

STANDING BY THE STORY
The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January.

The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari to confirm the conversation, and there was concern that there were enough aggressive reporters based in Baghdad with the sources to confirm the conversation that to deny the comments would create a bigger problem.

Instead, Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi told reporters that Obama told the Iraqis that they should not rush through what she termed a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of U.S. forces until after President Bush left office. In other words, the Iraqis should not negotiate an American troop withdrawal.

According to a Senate staffer working for Sen. Joseph Biden, Biden himself got involved in the shaping of the statement. "The whole reason he's on the ticket is the foreign policy insight," explained the staffer.

[Gimpy]

The entire world of journalism professionals in nearly every well respected form of "media" news organization know full well Amir Taheri is a well-documented serial fabricator.

So then my dear Joy, we need more than an just right-wing blog comments and the New York Post (right-wing rag) offering verbal support to this lying, scheming, dirtbag and neo-con radical

Now then, if you really want a reliable "blog" for use as a means to show how ridiculous this idiot Amir Taheri really is, check below.

http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=2281

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Amir Taheri and McCain's poor judgment


John McCain appears to have believed every bit of nonsense that Iraqi exiles in Washington circulated during their campaign to involve the US in an invasion of Iraq. One of the chief people involved in selling those deceptions in DC was Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser. Yesterday both of them were involved in promoting another deception, this time fabricated by an Iranian exile – showing once again that McCain never outgrows his poor judgment, any more than he wises up and casts off the discredited advisers he relies upon.

The background is this: Yesterday a Republican propaganda outlet, the New York Post, published a column by Amir Taheri that accused Barack Obama of secretly trying to delay the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Various right-wing nuts were all a-twitter about the allegation – despite two very compelling reasons to disbelieve it.

(1) Amir Taheri is a notorious fraudster. He was once powerful under the Shah's regime but now is an Iranian exile and neocon shill. Taheri has been exposed repeatedly for simply making things up to fit his political agenda. For example, in May 2006 he published a report in the National Post (Canada) falsely stating that a new Iranian law required Jews to wear special clothing and yellow patches to identify themselves in public. The paper had to retract the story, blaming Taheri, and apologize for it. Taheri's reputation, already extremely low in 2006, has been in the dirt ever since.


(2) Taheri's column in the New York Post refutes his own claim that "OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL". Taheri gives the game away at the very beginning of his column.

While campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

In other words, by Taheri's own account Obama did NOT "delay an agreement on a draw-down" of US troops from Iraq. Instead, Obama told the Iraqis he thought that the US Congress needed to sign off on any Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) – a position Obama has held publicly since Bush announced in 2007 that he was seeking a long-term SOFA treaty. SOFA regulates what US troops may do in Iraq and how they shall coordinate with the Iraqi government. It has nothing necessarily to do with any timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq; if the US government decides to withdraw troops, it doesn't need an OK from the Iraqi government.

So Taheri was doing what he does best, spread misinformation.

Predictably, it was just a matter of hours before the McCain campaign would rush to embrace Taheri's baseless smear of Obama. Here is a statement released by his top adviser, Randy Scheunemann, of PNAC infamy:

"At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power. If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq's Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting.

The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama's judgment and it demands an explanation."----end quote.

Actually, as I remarked, the episode reflects badly not on Obama's but on McCain's judgment. Heck, Scheunemann even admits that "it is not yet clear" what negotiations Taheri was claiming Obama had interfered with. In other words, the McCain camp recognizes that Taheri's allegations are incoherent. But they still chose to go ahead and tie themselves to Taheri's nonsense just because there's a "possibility" that something or other is amiss.


It sure sounds like McCain and his band of neocons have taken to heart Cheney's "One Percent Doctrine" (by which, if there's as much as a 1% chance that something nefarious is afoot, then one should act as if the possibility is a proven fact).

For what it's worth, today Obama responded by setting the record straight about Taheri's wild allegation.

Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri's article bore "as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial."

In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.

In the face of resistance from Bush, the Democrat has long said that any such agreement must be reviewed by the US Congress as it would tie a future administration's hands on Iraq.

"Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations, nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades," Morigi said.

In this instance, McCain's poor judgment in embracing Taheri's claim clearly goes well beyond the point of 'recklessness'. It's less clear to me what the right term is to describe his management style, however. Perhaps no term can adequately convey how foolishly McCain is behaving.


Update: Taheri has a new column in which he pretends that Obama's rebuttal of his nonsense actual confirms his claim. But, again, Taheri is playing games. He now asserts that his original point was this:

Obama preferred to have no agreement on US troop withdrawals until a new administration took office in Washington.

In fact, however, he had argued that Obama was interfering to delay troop withdrawals. There's a vast difference between obstructing withdrawals and preferring to go slowly on an agreement about them. In any case, Obama does not say he "preferred to have no agreement on US troop withdrawals" until Bush leaves office. He's talking about the need to submit treaties to Congress (whether or not they include side agreements such as a proposed timetable for withdrawal of troops). Troops can be withdrawn with or without such treaties.

Taheri remains an idiot and a liar.


Update Two: Marc Lynch weighs in at the link below with further observations about some basic errors and stupidities committed by Taheri in his first column. It's hard to know how much to attribute to Taheri's basic ignorance, how much to incompetence, and how much to malicious partisanship.


http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaa...is-absurd.html


Taheri's absurd conceit


Amir Taheri is getting some attention today with a remarkable piece in the New York Post alleging that Barack Obama "tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July." Ordinarily I'd ignore such silliness, but with the McCain campaign recklessly jumping all over it, and the usual suspects hopping on board, it's worth pointing out that how shoddy a piece of work it really is.

Taheri makes two major claims in the op-ed: first, that Obama tried to persuade Iraqis to delay signing an agreement; second, that this would result in delaying the troop withdrawal Obama advocates.

Taheri's only source for the first claim is a published interview with Zebari in al-Sharq al-Awsat (to which he also contributes columns), which doesn't quite say what he claims it says. Looking at the key quote in context makes this clear. For most of the first half of the interview Zebari described all of the problems with the negotiations and the uncertainties about whether it would be binding on the next administration. The interviewer then asked him why Iraqi leaders didn't just wait until the next administration - at which point Zebari responded "that is the question which Barack Obama asked me when I was in Washington a while ago." That's hardly the stuff of concerted pressure or independent diplomacy. At any rate, the Obama campaign denies the claim forcefully - and they do presumably have transcripts of the conversation on their side.

Plus, Taheri doesn't even get the time or location of the supposed exchange right. In the very same sentence which Taheri quoted, Zebari said: "That is the question which Barack Obama asked me when I was in Washington a while ago, when I met with McCain and Obama." That's right - Taheri's only piece of evidence that "Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July" is Zebari's account of an exchange which did not take place during Obama's trip to Baghdad in July, but rather during Zebari's trip to Washington in June. If Taheri can't even get such an obvious and consequential detail right, why should we trust anything else he says?


Taheri's real focus is on the second claim, that this exposes Obama's hypocrisy because the result of a delay in the agreement would be a delay in an American troop withdrawal. But this is, frankly, absurd. The U.S. is not negotiating an "agreement on a draw-down" with Iraq, it is negotiating two related long-term security agreements. The U.S. does not need to wait until it has negotiated and ratified a long-term security agreement to begin withdrawing troops. If President Bush wants to withdraw troops, he orders them to leave. The same is true for any future President. Whether U.S. forces are authorized to be in Iraq by a continuation of the UN mandate or a bilateral deal makes absolutely zero material difference to the next commander-in-chief's ability to redeploy forces at a pace of his own choosing (unless there is an agreement to leave earlier, which isn't at issue at this point).

Taheri is exceedingly disingenuous about what was being negotiated in June 2008 (when the conversation took place). Back then, the Bush administration was still trying to negotiate the McCain position of legalizing the U.S. force presence for the long term and vehemently rejected any talk of time tables, time lines, or time horizons. It was only in July that Maliki pulled the rug out from under McCain and Bush by insisting on a timetable for U.S. withdrawal in line with Obama's stated position. To describe the agreement being discussed in June as a "draw-down" agreement is misleading to the point of dishonesty. That might also explain why Taheri dissembles about when exactly the purported conversation took place.


Third, Taheri implies that Obama's position that the agreement be approved by Congress is part of a secret, nefarious scheme for delay. Um, no. Obama has consistently argued that any U.S.-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement should be approved by Congress because that would give it legal standing and would also be the best way to put the agreement on a firm, bipartisan footing to make it politically sustainable over the long run. Since the Iraqi parliament will approve whatever agreement is reached, it seems reasonable that Congress should have the same prerogative. In the absence of this approval, Obama has favored a temporary extension of the current UN mandate governing the presence of U.S. forces so an agreement can be reached that has the support of both the American and Iraqi people. This position is not a secret. It is right there on Obama’s website.


Finally, there's the part where Taheri suggests that if Obama were elected it would take him months to get a negotiating team in place [i.e. March or April of 2009], and "by then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June." Huh? Provincial elections will hopefully be held by December 2008 but may be pushed back into the early spring of 2009, but national elections are not due until the fall of 2009 at the earliest. Does Taheri not know that provincial elections are not the same as Parliamentary elections, or is he just assuming that readers won't know? Whatever.

Really a fine piece of work from the esteemed columnist. I'm sure he'll go far. (Yea, straight into the TOLIET!----Gimp)


###END###


Joy, if you would simply try and become intimately familiar with Taheri's work, I'd be surprised if you'd continue to try and promote his ridiculous rantings.


Just ask several of the newspapers that have had to publically make apologies to their readers in response for the misrepresntations and outright lies they published in columns by this individual.


Serial fabricator is, in fact, too kind a description for this lying sack of shit!


Gimp

[SEATJERKER]

...

...would have been for Obama to just stay on our side of the fence, and JUST speak to our troops,...

...NOT BE IN ANY CONTACT WITH ANYONE REPRESENTING THE ENEMY,...

...For him to engage in any "talks" in any way, shape or form before the election just undermines the credability of all the prior workings.

...What is this "Dewey defeats Truman"?,...

...Way over stomped his boundries,...

...I listened to his "speech" yesterday in NV., and it appears the higher power just rained on his parade, his same ole', same ole' drone didn't say a damn thing about progressing this Nation, all about mud slinging,...

...For a man who knew he was running for President months to years back, he sure didn't prepare himself for the American people with SOLID definitions on what "change" he "planned" to bring, and he sounds like a scratched record,...

...he's a rookie, a gold fish in a pool full of sharks, and I don't care how good he looks, how much he smiles, how much he flaps his gums, Nothing he has said shows me that he has any definate structure to a plan of action to "change" anything,...

...