"The Iraqi government made it clear there were apparently some translation problems in the quote, that that's not the position of the Prime Minister," he said. "That the prime minister believes and certainly the Iraqi government believes that withdrawal has to be based on conditions.

WASHINGTON, Jul 28 (IPS) - Many official and unofficial proponents of a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq are dismissing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's demand for a U.S. timeline for withdrawal as political posturing, assuming that he will abandon it under pressure.

But that demand was foreshadowed by an episode in June 2006 in which al-Maliki circulated a draft policy calling for negotiation of just such a withdrawal timetable and the George W. Bush administration had to intervene to force the prime minister to drop it.

McCain has made much of what he considers Obama's reckless promise to call in the generals on his very first day in the Oval Office and order them to devise a plan for ending the war within sixteen months. If they object to such a timetable, he plans to remind them that policy is for the president, implementation is for the military.

McCain ridicules such a timetable, calling it a surrender to the forces of al Qaeda, a notice to the bad guys that all they have to do is sit around for sixteen months and then take over the country, probably with the help of the Iranians. Although Obama has left himself some wriggle room--some troops to be left to train the Iraqis and stamp out a terrorist revival, or genocide, or instability--there is a clear difference between the candidates, and for a while McCain had the more plausible story.

Along comes George W. Bush to bail out Obama by accepting Al-Maliki's call for a "general time horizon" for the withdrawal of troops, a period generally understood to be two years or less. The difference between Obama's withdrawal timetable, and the president's "general time horizon", if indeed there is one, is lost on most voters. They now see McCain as wanting to keep U.S. troops in harm's way longer than his opponent, his own president, and Iraq's prime minister deem necessary.

The context of al-Maliki's earlier advocacy of a timetable for withdrawal was the serious Iraqi effort to negotiate an agreement with seven major Sunni armed groups that had begun under his predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari in early 2006. The main Sunni demand in those talks had been for a timetable for full withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Under the spur of those negotiations, al-Jaafari and Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaei had developed a plan for taking over security in all 18 provinces of Iraq from the United States by the end of 2007. During his first week as prime minister in late May, al-Maliki referred twice publicly to that plan.

At the same time al-Maliki began working on a draft "national reconciliation plan", which was in effect a road map to final agreement with the Sunni armed groups. The Sunday Times of London, which obtained a copy of the draft, reported Jun. 23, 2006 that it included the following language:

"We must agree on a time schedule to pull out the troops from Iraq, while at the same time building up the Iraqi forces that will guarantee Iraqi security, and this must be supported by a United Nations Security Council decision."

The heavy pressure that had obviously been applied to al-Maliki on the issue during and after the Bush visit was resented by al-Maliki and al-Rubaie. The Iraqi rancor over that pressure was evident in the op-ed piece by al-Rubaei published in the Washington Post a week after Bush's visit.

Although the article did not refer directly to al-Maliki's reconciliation plan and its offer to negotiate a timetable for withdrawal, the very first line implied that the issue was uppermost in the Iraqi prime minister's mind. "There has been much talk about a withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops from Iraq," wrote al-Rubaie, "but no defined timeline has yet been set."

Al-Rubaei declared "Iraq's ambition to have full control of the country by the end of 2008". Although few readers understood the import of that statement, it was an indication that the al-Maliki regime was prepared to negotiate complete withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 2008.

Then the national security adviser indicated that the government already had its own targets for the first two phases of foreign troop withdrawal: withdrawal of more than 30,000 troops to under 100,000 foreign troops by the end of 2006 and withdrawal of "most of the remaining troops" -- i.e., to less than 50,000 troops -- by end of the 2007.

The author explained why the "removal" of foreign troops was so important to the Iraqi government: it would "remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the resistance in the first place"; it would also "allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbours that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance..." Finally, al-Rubaie asserted, it would "legitimise the Iraqi government in the eyes of its own people."

He also took a carefully-worded shot at the Bush administration's actions in overruling the centrepiece of Iraq's reconciliation policy. "While Iraq is trying to gain independence from the United States," he wrote, "some influential foreign figures" were still "trying to spoon-feed our government and take a very proactive role in many key decisions."

McCain even used the dreaded buzzword himself on Friday during an interview on CNN. When asked by Wolf Blitzer why Maliki told the German magazine Der Speigel that Obama's 16-month timetable for withdrawal was the right one, McCain's response was a bit off-message.

"He said it's a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground," McCain said. "I think it's a pretty good timetable, as we should -- or horizons for withdrawal -- but they have to be based on conditions on the ground."

To McCain, the important part of this debate is that any withdrawal of American troops needs to be "conditions-based." But offering a rough withdrawal timeline -- as he did during his speech at the GI Forum -- and repeatedly telling voters in New Hampshire that "we will withdraw" is a far cry rhetorically from his support for a 100-year troop presence in the region.

For months, the Democratic nominee has advocated a rough 16-month timetable for withdrawal, and for months, his Republican rival has said such a schedule would amount to "surrender." That was a fertile ground for debate. But last week the White House announced that President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had agreed on the idea of a "time horizon" for withdrawing American troops, and Maliki told German newsmagazine Der Spiegel that U.S. troops should leave "as soon as possible, as far as we're concerned." "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about sixteen months," he said. "That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." All of which forced McCain to admit, in an interview Friday with CNN, that 16 months is a pretty good timetable." In other words, vamanos.

This kind of consensus may be good for the country. But unfortunately it's bad for McCain's campaign.