Iraqi Gov't Issues Oops

In a follow-up about this thing I wrote two days ago...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki got George Bush to agree to a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq. But this didn't get him any street cred in his part of the world. Al Jazeera said:

There's a rumor going around that Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is feeling his oats, flexing his muscle, and displaying a newfound confidence that has allowed him to challenge the American occupation of Iraq...But that's mostly wrong.

Now he's losing even more cred as he backtracks in a really lame way. In an interview with Spiegel:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama's plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned." He then continued: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

But then somebody was like, "shit, what if Obama loses?" and issued this official fart:

Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, issued a statement saying Mr. Maliki’s statement had been “as not conveyed accurately regarding the vision of Senator Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, on the timeframe for U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq,” but it did not address a specific error.

The New York Times says about this:

Naturally, Mr. Maliki did not want to imply he was backing one candidate over another in a foreign election.

And the Atlantic Monthly says:

Matthew Yglesias, a blogger for the Atlantic Monthly, was astonished by "how little effort was made" to make the Baghdad denial convincing.

Plus, Spiegel has, like, transcripts.

So basically the moral of the story is that Maliki can't get no R.E.S.P.E.C.T.