"We should leave Iraq if they want us to"

Aides to Sen. John McCain sought on Wednesday to clear up their boss' position on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's recent insistence that a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops be included in any security agreement between the two countries.

"John McCain has always been clear that American forces operate in Iraq only with the consent of that country's democratically elected government," Michael Goldfarb, a McCain spokesman, told the Huffington Post. "The Senator speaks frequently with Iraq's leaders and they have made clear that they share his belief that any timeline for withdrawal must be dictated by the facts on the ground. He met with the foreign minister and President separately within the last month...He met with Maliki on his last trip to Iraq sometime in late March."

Goldfarb's remarks represent a more pronounced effort to bring McCain's position on Iraq in line with Maliki's. McCain has forsworn deadlines for troop withdrawal -- insisting that it be tied to conditions on the ground -- and he did not, initially, express support the prime minister's position.

"Prime Minister Maliki is the leader of a country and I'm confident he will act as the President and the Foreign Minister both told me in the last several days," said the presumptive Republican nominee. "It will be directly related to the situation on the ground -- just as they have always said. And since we are succeeding, I am convinced, as I have said before, we will withdraw with honor, not according to a set timetable."

On Wednesday, aides to the Senator continued to argue that Maliki's statement was public posturing designed to improve his hand during the negotiations of a status of forces agreement.

McCain's allies also were forced to make concessions today in rationalizing how the U.S. could keep troops in Iraq against that country's wishes. Peter Hegseth, the head of the non-partisan Vets For Freedom (an advocacy group that supports McCain's Iraq War plan), acknowledged during a conference on Wednesday that the next president would ultimately have to listen to Maliki's directives.

"I think the Iraqi prime minister's prerogative is obviously important," he said. "They are a sovereign country. Their wishes, I think, are going to be granted by our government. And we've created an opportunity for them to make these kinds of statements and I think that is a good thing."

Critics of the war have jumped on Maliki's remark as evidence that criticism of Obama's Iraq policy (which calls for a responsible drawdown of U.S. troops) is entirely unfounded. They noted that Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie restated his government's desire to see a decrease in U.S. presence, on Tuesday. And pointed to a 2004 remark given by John McCain in front of the Council of Foreign Relations, in which the Senator said the U.S. "would have to leave," if the Iraqi government asked it to.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports (as emailed out by the Obama campaign) on another instance that seemed like collaboration between Vets for Freedom and the McCain camp.

Today... there appears to be another, similar coincidence in the way Vets for Freedom's ads are going up, just as McCain's ads are going down. According to a Democratic media firm, Vets for Freedom purchased advertising time in three Michigan television markets, Flint, Grand Rapids and Traverse City, covering July 10 to July 16. At the same time, the McCain campaign decreased its advertising in those three markets for the period from July 8 to July 14.

Coordination between the group and the campaign would be illegal.

German general needs 6,000 additional troops in Afghanistan

Up to 6,000 additional troops are urgently needed in Afghanistan and a failure to deploy them will only prolong the presence of Western forces in the country, a German NATO general said on Sunday.

Egon Ramms told public radio station Deutschlandfunk that alliance members would end up paying a price later if they did not boost troop numbers now.

"We are talking about a total of 5,000, 6,000 soldiers," Ramms said. "We need these soldiers now, very soon, because we need to hold specific areas, we need to win over Afghanistan's citizens and because at some point, in 2010, 2011 or 2012 we will want to hand over responsibility to Afghan forces."

Roughly 60,000 foreign troops are in Afghanistan, most of them part of the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF), but security has deteriorated over the past two years.

Some 6,000 people were killed in 2007, the deadliest year since U.S. and NATO-led forces and gangs of the so-called "Northern Alliance" seized Kabul and established the puppet regime in the country.

Western experts admit that since the departure of the Taliban from large cities the war in Afghanistan did not end. The Taliban have been actively fighting against the US and NATO forces and it does not look like they are going to stop the war. Moreover, judging from the emotional statement by the German general, the fate of the victory in Afghanistan is far from being resolved.