Der Spiegel, Der Spiegel, auf der Wand, wer ist von ihnen alle das angemessenste?
In a Saturday interview with the German news outlet Der Spiegel, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki said that "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." And although "this is by no means an election endorsement," "[t]hose who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems."
How does the Bush administration respond? The day before Maliki's comments, Bush had spoken for the first time of a "general time horizon" for withdrawal. The day of Maliki's comments, someone within the White House accidentally emails the Spiegel article to the press corps mailing list. The day after Maliki's comments, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq contacts Maliki's office and Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh comes out and says that someone had mistranslated Maliki's remarks. Even though the translator worked for Maliki, not Der Spiegel. And even though that's what Maliki said.
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