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From:	Bart (129.171.32.13)
Subject:	McCain adviser on Iraqi PM's Obama endorsement: 'We're f**ked'
Date:	July 19, 2008 at 9:24 pm PST

McCain adviser on Iraqi PM's Obama endorsement: 'We're f**ked'

07/19/2008 @ 7:49 pm
Filed by RAW STORY

Senator John McCain ridiculed Senator Obama's timetable for Iraq withdrawal as a tactic aimed only at getting votes.

For the Iraqi Prime minister, it apparently worked.

The clear endorsement of Senator Barack Obama by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Saturday morning came as a strong blow to the McCain campaign.

McCain has claimed a superiority to Obama in matters of foreign policy as a major selling point to his candidacy for president, but that position is more difficult in the wake of al-Maliki's statement.

After hearing of the announcement, a sometime adviser to the McCain campaign said in an email, "We're f**ked," according to Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic.

A senior McCain campaign official responded to Ambinder about the development.

"His domestic politics require him to be for us getting out," he said on the condition of anonymity. "The military says 'conditions based' and Maliki said 'conditions based' yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders."

But it will be difficult for McCain to deny his own statement in 2004 that the United States would have to leave Iraq if the nation's leaders requested it.

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QUESTION: Let me give you a hypothetical, senator. What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there? I understand it’s a hypothetical, but it’s at least possible.

McCAIN: Well, if that scenario evolves, then I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because — if it was an elected government of Iraq — and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.

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