Obama tried underminding Bush’s negotiations with Iraqis…
That’s the “Exlusive” from the Washington Times this morning:
At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn’t be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.
Mr. Obama’s conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House candidate’s contacts with foreign governments while the sitting president is conducting a war.
…
Read the whole thing, and please tell me how that “exclusive” sheds any new light on the situation that we didn’t already know from the original article by the NY Post in September (good commentary at Hot Air) along with Obama’s response:
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.
Yea, read that twice. As both Ed Morrissey and Glenn Reynolds pointed out, that’s one of the worst confirmations in denial history (i.e., he basically agreed with the accusation while saying he didn’t).
It didn’t take long for the Bush administration officials to deflate the story by explaining how Obama didn’t really undermine anything afterall.
So what exactly is the “exclusive” part of the Washington Times article? I don’t see any, aside from the pro-Obama spin:
Mr. Obama has called for a phased U.S. withdrawal of all but a residual force from Iraq over 16 months, a position the Iraqi government appears to have embraced.
For the record, Mr. Obamassiah embraced a phased US withdrawel regardless of the conditions on the ground. The Iraqi government and Bush have called for such a withdrawel that is highly dependent on the conditions on the ground. Obama’s plan was a defeatist “retreat”, while the current plan is one that is being considered now that “The Surge” has worked and the US has basically won the war. BIG difference with no differentiation within the media.
Do you see anything new?
