Todd Gitlin notes the major papers' rather reticent response to al Maliki's Der Spiegel interview.

Todd wrote about three hours ago. As of just before midnight, as far as I can tell, the Post relegates the story to two paragraphs near the top of the paper's story about Obama's trip to Afghanistan. The article returns to the topic and provides some elaboration at the end. The Times gives the story almost the identical treatment -- a short reference below the lede and returned to at the end of the piece.

The most credulous take I've seen so far is CNN's which all but takes al Dabbagh's 'translation error' explanation at face value.

Let me know what write-ups you're seeing.

Late Update: I'm not sure precisely what it 'means'. But in scanning around the major news sites I'm noticing that the better coverage of this story seems to be in the big papers' blogs rather than in their front page stories -- most of which are now out on the websites.

I try to learn as much as I can about foreign cultures. And I'm learning that it's very difficult to translate the nuances of the Arabic of Iraqi leaders when they're speaking at variance with the talking points of the Bush White House. Language is a funny thing.

Along those lines, Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh, who the Times calls a spokesman for the Iraqi government, has released a statement saying that Prime Minister Maliki's statement was "misunderstood and mistranslated" and "not conveyed accurately regarding the vision of Senator Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, on the timeframe for U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq." But as the Times notes al Dabbagh did not specify what had been mistranslated.

Another interesting detail, noted by the Times. al-Dabbagh's statement was released by CentCom. I do not know how often Iraqi government statements are released by CentCom.

In any case, here's the rest of al-Dabbagh's 'clarification' ...

Al-Dabbagh explained that Mr. al-Maliki confirmed the existence of an Iraqi vision stems from the reality with regard to Iraq security needs, as the positive developments of the security situation and the improvement witnessed in Iraqi cities makes the subject of U.S. forces' withdrawal within prospects, horizons and timetables agreed upon and in the light of the continuing positive developments on the ground, and security that came within the Strategic Plan for Cooperation which was laid and developed by Mr. Maliki and President George Bush. The Iraqi government appreciates and values the efforts of all the friends who continue to support and supporting Iraqi security forces.

Al-Dabbagh underscored that the statements made by the head of the ministerial council (Prime Minister al-Maliki) or any of the members of the Iraqi government should not be understood as support to any U.S. presidential candidates.

Late Update: CNN plays it pretty straightforwardly as a mistranslation. Considerably more credulous than the Times.

TPM Reader RD has a good question some of the more pliant journos would do well to consider ...

I take it from watching the news and reading the coverage of the campaign that Obama's a big fat flip-flopper.

But it makes me wonder... At this point, is there any significant policy position that John McCain currently holds, on any topic, that he's consistently held over the past 10 years? I mean that as a serious question. On economics, foreign policy, environmental policy, immigration, the role of evangelicals, you name it, it's hard for me to pin down. I guess maybe on free trade?

The McCain campaign has just come out with their response to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki's endorsement of Obama's withdrawal plan. I think the clotted, dodging-the-issue nature of the response communicates very clearly the box this has placed the McCain camp in.

ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, McCain 2008 Senior Foreign Policy Advisor Randy Scheunemann issued the following statement:

"The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama advocates an unconditional withdrawal that ignores the facts on the ground and the advice of our top military commanders. John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground. Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today. Timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor, which is of no apparent concern to Barack Obama. The fundamental truth remains that Senator McCain was right about the surge and Senator Obama was wrong. We would not be in the position to discuss a responsible withdrawal today if Senator Obama's views had prevailed."

Got that? Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Set aside for the moment that McCain doesn't believe in withdrawal at all. Scheunemann is betting on our believing that Maliki himself doesn't know what he means.

Late Update: CNN has finally picked up the Maliki statement story. There's some effort to play it down but there's only so much you can. It will be particularly interesting to see the response of the jejune Washington Post OpEd page.

Here's the full TPMtv interview with Speaker Pelosi down at Netroots Nation (see this clip for Pelosi's comments on President Bush's "Time Horizon" for withdrawal from Iraq).

David presses Speaker Pelosi on FISA. Take a look ...

To comment on this interview, click here.

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.

Consider McCain's strategy, which is all bound up with Iraq.

All understand it is a given that the war is unpopular and that the vast majority of Americans want out as soon as possible. The big of wiggle room is just what's 'possible.' McCain has invested his entire campaign in support for the purportedly nascent Iraqi democracy al Maliki represents and the claim that Obama's support for a timetable for withdrawal irresponsibly risks losing the gains we've achieved and giving Iraq back to al Qaeda.

Here, with a brush of the hand and in so many words, al Maliki says, "No, we're good."

What exactly is McCain to say to that? He can hardly turn against Maliki or say he doesn't have a feel of the situation on the ground.

What's more, he's given Obama want amounts to a potent new talking point by defining American redeployment out of Iraq as 'victory'. Says Maliki: "So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat. But that isn't the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias."

I don't doubt that the McCain will come up with some pat response, though their silence so far does signal the difficulty of coming up with it. But McCain's campaign has been almost entirely dedicated to raising doubts about a withdrawal strategy the great majority would like to embrace. And Maliki has now handed Obama the trump card of all trump cards with which to parry all of McCain's attacks.

I would not discount the possibility that the White House will muscle Maliki into a retraction of some sort. But I think it will be difficult for that to seem to be anything other than what it is. What he said pre-waterboarding will always appear more genuine than whatever statement came later. McCain may also say that his 'surge' strategy is what made all this possible. But fundamentally that's not a point Obama is arguing. The debate is about whether or not to leave. And on that count, Maliki has now placed McCain is an extremely precarious position.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wrote off the President's new "general time horizon" for withdrawal from Iraq, telling TPMtv, "Same old, same old, same old, same old. What are they going to say? They have not said anything as a matter of fact. Aspirational goals, which means it could be ten years."

"This administration knows that it could have made this same statement a long time ago, and they're I think being embarrassed into saying something by al-Maliki saying, 'It's time for you to go.' So I don't place a lot of confidence in that."

And later: "I think this is just more of the same from the administration knowing that the American people have long abandoned their support of this war and now they're trying to sound, dare I say the word, reasonable. But I think it's just more of the same."

A new right-wing attack ad says Obama is worse than a flip-flopper. That and other political news in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.

Ouch. This should sure make the next round of negotiations between Bush and Maliki a lot of fun. The German magazine Spiegel interviewed Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki who said that he supports Obama's 16 month timetable approach.

"US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months," said al Maliki "That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

The Obama campaign's Susan Rice just put out this statement crowing thanking Maliki for his support of the plan ...

"Senator Obama welcomes Prime Minister Maliki's support for a 16 month timeline for the redeployment of U.S combat brigades. This presents an important opportunity to transition to Iraqi responsibility, while restoring our military and increasing our commitment to finish the fight in Afghanistan."

Maliki went on to say:

"Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business," he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain's more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: "Those 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."

Do keep an eye out for some 'clarifications' of Maliki's stance. But as much as I suspect that this is a genuine characterization of Maliki's views, we should not discount that his willingness to say this is also a recognition of the way the winds are blowing.

As you know, David Kurtz and Ben Craw are doing a slew of interviews this weekend at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin. We've got a bunch of headliner interviews lined-up. But for my part I'm just as interested in the interviewers we're doing with candidates from around the country. By and large these interviews aren't going to generate big headlines. But they're candidates who's names you may have heard but who you likely don't know too much about.

So in many ways these are the interviews I'm most interested in seeing. It's a good opportunity to get a sense of who they are and take their measure. .

Here's an interview we did with Jeff Merkley, who's running for senate this year out in Oregon against Gordon Smith (R). So far it's looking like a tight race ...

See the rest of our interviews at TPMtv.com.

We're watching Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Q&A right now with conference attendees. We'll be interviewing Pelosi later this morning and hope to have the video of that interview posted this afternoon.

There's also rumors of a surprise guest speaker here. Stay tuned.

Late Update: Al Gore will be appearing shortly.

Later Update: A stirring reception for Gore, as you might expect. We hope to snag him, too, for TPMtv.

It occurs to me watching Gore speak on global warming how stunted the political debate on climate change remains in this country. In less than six months, no matter who is elected, we'll have a President who acknowledges the seriousness of the threat of climate change. We'll finally have the opportunity -- years if not decades overdue -- to begin to piece together a legislative response to global warming. But think for a moment about how little discussion there is of what those legislative fixes ought to be.

Whoever is elected will not arrive in the Oval Office with a mandate on specific measures to take because there is no such public consensus or even emerging consensus. In fact, the debate on what to do and how to do it will only be then just beginning. That's not to say that lobbyists for interested parties are not already well underway in preparing for that debate. They would not be very good at their jobs if they didn't already have a pretty good idea of what legislation is likely to get passed on this issue in 2009.

When it comes right down to it, the campaign to deny the existence of global warming, to undermine the science, to slow-roll the political response has been wildly successful. Here is Gore, the world's leading spokesperson on the issue, who began his speech here asking us to internalize the idea that the Arctic icecap is disappearing (rapidly), still being forced to be a clarion on the very existence of the problem. It's sad.

I guess McCain was indiscreet and misinformed.

The first leg of Obama's world tour was to Afghanistan -- not Iraq -- although he stopped briefly in Kuwait on the way. He arrived in Kabul overnight U.S. time.

Late Update: The Obama campaign released an early pool report from the trip.

From Reuters:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.

In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

"U.S. 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."

You'll recall that just a couple of weeks ago Maliki's call for a withdrawal timetable was dismissed by the White House as a "transcription error."

Just out from the McCain campaign ...

ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm issued the following statement:

"It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country. That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain's ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country's problems, it hurts the country. To end this distraction and get on with the real debate, I hereby step down as Co-Chair of the McCain Campaign and join the growing number of rank-and-file McCain supporters."

But is he still an advisor?

Late Update: It's like parody. Seems he will still be advising McCain.

TPM's David Kurtz and Ben Craw have done and are doing a string of great interviews from the Netroots Nation conference in Austin. And you can see all of them at the TPMtv website.

Any thoughts on the reaction if Barack Obama had publicly broken the embargo on details and timing of Sen. McCain's imminent visit to a war zone?

It's that time of year.

TPM brings on a new class of interns each season. And we're now taking applications for our Fall 2008 cycle. TPM interns are probably as intimately and rapidly involved in the preparation and production of news coverage as interns at any other news organization. And that ranges from work on the news section of the front page to research for our news blogs to video editing to bylined articles. Needless to say, this fall is going to have no shortage of political news. The application deadline is July 25th. To find out details for how to apply, click here.

Apropos of Josh's post below, Richard Clarke discusses the series of recent foreign policy shifts from McCain and Bush -- all toward the Obama position:

This is the lead on a story just out over the Reuters wire ...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.

The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator's trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials' visits to Iraq in advance.

"I believe that either today or tomorrow -- and I'm not privy to his schedule -- Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators" who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon.

The Reuters piece hints at it. But if Obama is going to be in Iraq this weekend, this is a major breach on McCain's part. As a knowledgeable insider notes ...

If it is true that Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, it is a very serious mistake for McCain to have disclosed it publically. Even for run-of-the-mill CODELs the military gives guidance like, "Please strongly discourage Congressional offices from issuing press releases prior to their trips which mention their intent to travel to the AOR and/or the dates of that travel or their scheduled meetings. Such releases are a serious compromise to OPSEC." If Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, I can not begin to imagine how much this is complicating the security planning for the trip.

It's known that Obama is leaving on his foreign trip this weekend and the Journal OpEd page this morning said that Obama could arrive in Iraq "as early as this weekend." And with a slew of reporters in tow, it's not exactly highly classified information. But there is a reason definite information about these sorts of trips aren't released in advance.

Hypothetically, maybe McCain was just guessing. But even so it would still be a serious lapse of judgment on his part.

We're seeing what more we can find out.