A Good Trip

by Steve Soto

Reuters photo

Obama's trip is going well. The Iraqis are endorsing the 16-month withdrawal timeline for combat troops, and have now made it clear they are hopeful that combat troops will be out of Iraq by 2010. They have gone as far as they can to signal an alignment with Obama's approach without getting involved with the American presidential election, which makes sense. What is clear is that they can read the polls, and aren't endorsing McCain's more open-ended policy. Even the Bush Administration's clumsy effort to get al-Maliki to back away from his Der Spiegel interview backfired when the NYT translated the actual interview and found that al-Maliki did in fact endorse Obama's position without prompting.

Obama has already met with Prime Minister al-Maliki, and Cheney buddy Iraqi president Jalal Talabani today, and is being treated like a foreign head of state on this trip. It's a nightmare for McCain, who along with Bush has looked like two guys playing catch-up.