Posted by
On the Right on Sunday, July 20, 2008 2:01:35 AM
Please.
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.
As if it’s not bad enough that they’re trying to spin this after the fact, the Times reports that the statement was put out by Centcom,
just to make the U.S. fingerprints on it extra legible, I guess. In any
event, Maliki’s desire to make any timetable contingent upon further
security gains was already clear from the Spiegel translation — or more
specifically, the first version of the Spiegel translation, before they
went and surreptitiously changed it.