While analysts are still trying to digest Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's embrace of Barack Obama's 16 month timetable for withdrawal (despite a White House sponsored effort to get Maliki to withdraw that remark) a spokesman for the government told reporters that the Iraqis would prefer to see American combat troops leave by 2010 which would be very close to Obama's proposed timetable.Ali al-Dabbagh has emerged the last couple of weeks as an interesting spokesman for Maliki. He has twice come out and tried to "correct" what he has termed twice now "misinterpretations" and "mistranslatations" of Maliki's words.Each time, the "correction" was made when a firestorm broke out here in the US over what Maliki said. On July 7th, the PM made it be known that he wanted a timetable included in any Status of Forces agreement with the US. Ali al-Dabbagh emerged shortly afterwards to issue a clarification saying that Maliki had been misquoted. That may have...(Read Full Post)