This Is Even More Hilarious

We all know how the Bushies leaned on al-Maliki to take back what he said in the Der Spiegel interview:

But a spokesman for al-Maliki said his remarks “were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately.”

Except that this doesn’t stand up under any sort of scrutiny:

he’s debunked shit (8+ / 0-)

he said he was “mistranslated” without saying exactly what Maliki said was being mistranslated.  What part was mistranslated?  The part where he thought 16 months was a good timetable?  The line about how he wanted troops out “as soon as possible”?  The part where he said that those with shorter-term goals were more realistic than those with open ended goals?

Basically he would have to walkback the entire friggen’ interview for it to do McCain any good.

And his statement was released by the Pentagon of all people (and I haven’t even gotten to the point that Bush was going to make damn sure Maliki was going to backtrack on his statements)

Oh yeah..and a mistranslation.  I guess that’s going to be the standard line from now on whenever the Iraqi leaders say something Bush doesn’t like.

Eggszacktly.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah — the McCain people know what Maliki’s support of Obama’s withdrawal plan means for them and their candidate (h/t MLDB):

Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, “We’re fucked.”

That’s pretty much it.