Maliki Denies Agreeing With Obama's Plans For Withdrawal

Josh Marshall is all a twitter over Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki practically endorsing Obama in the presidential election:

I've spent a couple hours now trying to process the probable impact of Prime Minister al Maliki's explicit endorsement of Barack Obama's 16 month timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. My first instinct is always to try not to overstate the impact of momentary developments. But I don't think it's enough to say this is a huge development. It's huger than that. In a stroke, I think, al Maliki has cut McCain off at the knees in a way I'm not sure his campaign strategy can recover from.

Poor Josh has been suckered, taken by wishful thinking into believing the implausible idea that Maliki is a 'surrender you can believe in' Democrat at heart. Once again Maliki's comments were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately by the MSM. How do we know this? Because Maliki's spokesman said his comments were "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately."

This is the second time that Maliki has been completely mistranslated over withdrawal plans in a way that conveniently helps Obama. Obama himself promoted this falsehood in an editorial he wrote in the New York Times. You'd almost think there was some kind of agenda in this misreporting.

Update: Josh Marshall is not honest enough to admit he was wrong, and is still bitterly clinging to his original take. The closest he gets is saying that CNN is 'credulous' about the story. Credulous? The CNN story said Maliki flat-out refutes what Der Spiegel was reporting. Yet Marshall is scratching his head wondering why the entire MSM isn't trumpeting Der Spiegel's falsehood from coast to coast. Sure the MSM is in the tank for Obama, but they don't want to appear like utter fools, which is more than Josh Marshall can say.