The Washington Times reports:
At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn’t be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.
Mr. Obama’s conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House candidate’s contacts with foreign governments while the sitting president is conducting a war.
Some of the specifics of the conversations remain the subject of dispute. Iraqi leaders purported to The Times that Mr. Obama urged Baghdad to delay an agreement with Mr. Bush until next year when a new president will be in office – a charge the Democratic campaign denies.
Mr. Obama spoke June 16 to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari when he was in Washington, according to both the Iraqi Embassy in Washington and the Obama campaign. Both said the conversation was at Mr. Zebari’s request and took place on the phone because Mr. Obama was traveling. However, the two sides differ over what Mr. Obama said.
The allegation is very similar to one made last month the New York Post’s Amir Taheri. The truth of that allegation was never determined. The Obama campaign denied it, but in the denial actually seemed to confirm Taheri’s central claims. Later, however, the allegation was better denied by some outside the Obama campaign, including Senator Hagel. After that, the story dropped out of the media.
The Washington Times, however, makes clear that this is a separate allegation. It refers to a conversation in June, while the Post referred to conversations in July:
A recent article in the New York Post quoted Mr. Zebari as saying that Mr. Obama asked Iraqi leaders in July to delay any agreement on a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq until the next U.S. president takes office. Miss Morigi denied this.
Is it true? I think it’s clear that something happened. The Washington Times seems to be confident in its story, reporting it as a news exclusive and claiming to have confirmed it. Moreover, the Obama campaign’s non-denial denial of Taheri’s allegation indicated to me that there was something there.
So what exactly did happen? Obama will deny the story, but that may tell us nothing. Obama has been known to deny an entire story due to minor incorrect details, and has denied stories that were accurate in every particular, but of course he has also denied stories that really were wrong. So the denial itself won’t tell us anything at all. What might tell us something is the way he denies it. (For example, the “denial” of the Taheri allegation was rather revealing.)
In any case, at this point it seems certain that Obama did indeed urge delay in some sort of negotiation with Iraq. It remains to be seen exactly what he tried to delay, and how he tried to delay it. I wouldn’t bet against the Washington Times though.
(Via the Corner.)
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