Obama Meets With Iraqi President; Talks Timeline for U.S. Troop Withdrawal

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama and the Iraqi government found agreement in Baghdad on Monday for a 2010 withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, a timeline that has faced withering criticism from Republican Sen. John McCain.

As Obama laid eyes on the Iraq war for the first time in more than two years, he emerged from a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, calling it “very constructive.”

The trip follows Republican attempts to diminish Obama’s foreign policy experience and a challenge from McCain, who complained that Obama was wrong to plan for troop withdrawal without having visited since January 2006. McCain has visited Iraq eight times since the war began. The Arizona senator has said Obama’s foreign policy plans are naive and that he is untested.

After Obama sat down with al-Maliki in Baghdad’s heavily protect Green Zone, government spokesman Ali al-Dabagh, who is very close to the Iraqi leader and sat in on the meeting, said Baghdad was not interested in troop withdrawal plans that arise out of the American presidential campaign but “in a real timetable the Iraqis have set.”

When asked for a date, al-Dabagh said, “up to 2010.”

That would match Obama’s pledge to remove U.S. combat troops within 16 months of taking office and reinforces al-Maliki’s reported support for that timetable in an interview published last week in Der Spiegel, a German magazine.

Here is the Demorat plan at the forefront. In war time you tell everything you know, no matter who it hurts. Al-Maliki said a 2010 time-line is acceptable… Do you honestly believe that same “Time-line” has not been discussed with the current CIC? The difference?

A person in charge of prosecuting a war does not give the enemy a time when all will be over in a public statement. The issue may be discussed and even agreed to behind closed doors and the only folks knowing the REAL time-line are those in charge of making decisions. OBAMA is not making ANY decisions yet, and for the Iraqi PM to give Obama this type of ammunition for his idiot followers is irresponsible.

The Iraqi PM has pretty much decided that Barrak Hussein Obama is going to be running things here. He might be, and when (or IF) we hold to a timetable, and Al-Qaeda comes back and Iran comes in and a lot of his countrymen die… WE can look back on this time and say “IRAQ is responsible for IRAQ” The responsibility is squarely on Al Maliki now.
No time table EVER IMO, but since the leadership of Iraq feels like negotiating a retreat already…
Fuck it leave NOW, The Iraqi PM has put his cards on the table, no need for us to be there now, he is negotiating with a person (Liberal anti-Iraq war after things started to go bad) who has caused more death than any Marines rifle or bombing run, OBAMA and his ilk have been supplying the enemy’s of Iraq and America with the very thing they need… HOPE, and KNOWLEDGE. The HOPE we would surrender followed by the KNOWLEDGE that if they held out long enough WE WOULD!

Regardless of how you see IRAQ, why, what, where, or who.. THE ISSUE IS NOW! The issue is do we provide ammunition to those we have stopped, or at least have on the run, and let them know “HEY guys look, all we have to do is hang out in Afghanistan or Pakistan till 2010, then we come back and finish this thing.”

Good move there Barak Hussien Obama.