On Sunday, after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki indicated support for a 16-month U.S. withdrawal, the U.S. military distributed a statement from Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh saying Maliki was “misunderstood and mistranslated.” But The New Republic reports that “Maliki actually got a copy of the interview before it was printed and had the option to make any changes.” A writer at Der Spiegel sent TNR the following statement:
The reason the magazine scores so many high level interviews is that the editors agree to allow the subjects to “authorize” the interviews before they go to press. It wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, in other words: Maliki not only endorsed Obama’s plans for withdrawing from Iraq, but his office then explicitly approved the endorsement before it was printed. The denials, then, were doubly facetious.