. . . why Obama isn't all over the fact that the Iraqi government has basically endorsed his pullout timetable plans? When this hit the news a couple months ago, I took a little baby step toward thinking the election was in the bag. After all, hadn't Maliki just taken the central plank of McCain's campaign away from him? And it could quite easily be argued that it was pressure from the Obama campaign that brought the withdrawal-timetable narrative to the fore. It didn't require "negative" campaigning to say that McCain's "if it takes 100 years" ideas ran counter to what the Iraqis themsevles wanted, which was quite close to what Obama has proposed. But it seems to me that by now this opportunity has pretty much been squandered.