[Vision2020] Forked Tongue: Change You Can Believe In

[No Weatherman]

Last year Barack Obama undermined the official administration of Kenya
while he was stumping for his cousin Odinga:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpvLV3d1Eq4

and this year Barack Obama undermined the official US administration
while he was stumping for himself.

Obama tried to sway Iraqis on Bush deal
In private conversations on troop presence, candidate pitched delay
Barbara Slavin
Friday, October 10, 2008

EXCLUSIVE:
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.

"In the conversation, the senator urged Iraq to delay the [memorandum
of understanding] between Iraq and the United States until the new
administration was in place," said Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq's ambassador
to the United States.

He said Mr. Zebari replied that any such agreement would not bind a
new administration. "The new administration will have a free hand to
opt out," he said the foreign minister told Mr. Obama.

Mr. Sumaidaie did not participate in the call, he said, but stood next
to Mr. Zebari during the conversation and was briefed by him
immediately afterward.

The call was not recorded by either side, and Mr. Zebari did not
respond to repeated telephone and e-mail messages requesting direct
comment.

Mr. Obama has called for a phased U.S. withdrawal of all but a
residual force from Iraq over 16 months, a position the Iraqi
government appears to have embraced.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have been struggling for months to finalize a
deal that will allow U.S. troops to remain after Dec. 31, when a U.N.
mandate sanctioning the military presence expires. Iraqi officials
have said that the main impediment is agreement over a timeline for
U.S. redeployment and immunity from Iraqi prosecution for U.S. troops
and civilians.

Obama campaign spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Mr. Obama does not object
to a short-term status of forces agreement, or SOFA.

Mr. Obama told Mr. Zebari in June that a SOFA "should be completed
before January and it must include immunity for U.S. troops," Miss
Morigi wrote in an e-mail.

However, the Democratic nominee said a broader strategic framework
agreement governing a longer-term U.S. presence in Iraq "should be
vetted by Congress," she wrote.

She said Mr. Obama said the same thing when he met in July with Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Mr. Zebari in Baghdad.

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. She said the request for Senate vetting was
bipartisan and noted that the first Obama-Zebari conversation took
place 12 days after four other members of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee — including Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and
Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urging consultation over any
agreements committing U.S. troops and civilian contractors to Iraq
"for an extended period of time."

When Mr. Obama spoke to Mr. Zebari, he was speaking in his capacity as
a senator and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Miss
Morigi said. "It's obvious that others are trying to mischaracterize
Obama's position, [but] on numerous occasions he has made it perfectly
clear that the United States only has one president at a time and that
the administration speaks with one voice."

Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who accompanied Mr. Obama in
Iraq along with Mr. Hagel, said they made "no suggestion of any type
of delay" in any agreements.

A congressional aide who was also present and spoke on the condition
of anonymity said the senators asked for a congressional role similar
to that required by the Iraqi Constitution for Iraq's parliament.

Still, the fact that the Illinois Democrat on June 3 clinched enough
delegates to be assured the Democratic presidential nomination gives
his comments special force — something that also applies to the
Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a key proponent of
the surge of extra U.S. forces to Iraq last year.

As a U.S. senator, Mr. Obama "has a foot in both camps," said Ross K.
Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. "It's
within the jurisdiction of his committee and something he's entitled
to speak about. It doesn't raise a red flag for me."

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined to comment on the matter.

Leslie Phillips, a press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, also
declined to comment even though an embassy note-taker was present
during the senators' meeting in Iraq. "The embassy's role is purely to
facilitate the meetings," she said.

Presidential nominees traditionally have not intervened personally in
foreign-policy disputes, although campaign surrogates have done so.

Historian Robert Dallek has documented meetings with South Vietnamese
diplomats in 1968 by Republican vice-presidential candidate Spiro
Agnew and Anna Chennault, widow of Gen. Claire Chennault, the
commander of "Flying Tiger" forces in China during World War II.

Mr. Dallek, author of "Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times
1961–1973," obtained tapes of the conversations from bugs the Johnson
administration had placed in the South Vietnamese Embassy in
Washington.

Negotiations to end the Vietnam War were taking place in Paris at the
time between the Johnson administration and the North and South
Vietnamese.

Mr. Agnew and Mrs. Chennault "signaled the South Vietnamese that they
would get a better deal with Richard Nixon as president instead of the
Democrat" Hubert Humphrey, Mr. Dallek said.

"Johnson was furious and said that Nixon was guilty of treason," Mr.
Dallek said, but neither he nor Mr. Humphrey disclosed the matter
before the election, which Mr. Nixon won.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/10/obama-sought-to-sway-iraqis-on-bush-deal/