RUSH: Yesterday Amir Taheri in the New York Post quoted the Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Obama made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July that (paraphrasing) ‘You guys shouldn’t start talking about troop withdrawal now, you should wait ’til the next president’s elected.’ The quote here from the Iraqi foreign minister, ‘He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement on US troop withdrawal until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington. However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops rather than keeping the matter open.’ So basically the foreign minister of Iraq says Obama came over here and tried to get us to delay any action whatsoever on the withdrawal of US troops until after the US presidential election.
Well, this sent the Obama campaign into a tizzy because this is a violation of law. This borders on treason. He’s a presidential candidate. He cannot go over and negotiate for the United States on matters like this. Aside from the hypocrisy that was Obama promising everybody to get these troops out of there immediately when he was elected, this would push pack the withdrawal easily to 2011 or 2012. He’s just a hypocrite on this. He wanted Bush to withdraw the troops so that Bush would lose the war, the Democrats would say Bush lost the war, but now that the prospect of winning the war could redound to Obama, he wants the troops there. He wants to be the one to declare victory, he wants to be the one to bring the troops out on his terms, and he asked the Iraqis to hold them. So his campaign sends out this denial yesterday. The campaign went nuts suggesting that this did not happen, and in the process of denying it, they confirmed it.
‘Obama’s national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri’s article bore ‘as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial.” And then she said this in the statement, ‘In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a ‘Strategic Framework Agreement’ governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office.’ Well, that’s exactly what the Iraqi guy said! So they send out this press release denying it, saying Amir Taheri, he’s a conservative Iranian, he’s lying about this, and in their denial they confirm it, they confirm exactly what Amir Taheri said, that Obama told the Iraqis they should not rush through a strategic framework agreement governing the future of US forces until after Bush leaves office, which is exactly what Amir Taheri said. Obama went to Iraq and interfered with US diplomacy and is now denying it. This is a sitting duck issue. McCain, whoa, do you realize what’s just fallen into your lap here, my good friend? Your buddies in the media are going to gloss over this. They’re going to gloss over Troopergate. In fact, they’re going to portray the exact opposite, Troopergate, Tasergate. Gonna have to hammer this stuff. If you don’t want to do it, let Palin go out and do it. Somebody’s gotta go out and hammer this guy on this and his economic ignorance, woeful, scary economic ignorance.