A White House employee accidentally sent out an email titled "Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan".  Ooops.  So much for the inexperienced Obama.  Especially since Bush himself has announce support for an Iraqi pullout on a schedule he’s calling a "general time horizon".  So much for not surprising the enemy with a withdrawal timetable.

According to Bloomberg,

Obama’s 16-month window is “the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,'’ Maliki said in interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine published on its Web site yesterday. U.S. troops should leave the country “as soon as possible,'’ Maliki said.

The McCain camp responded quickly and shamelessly tried to take credit for the whole situation.  Tucker Bounds, McCain spokesman (until he sticks his foot in his mouth, aka Phil Gramm) sent out an e-mail response statement:

The only reason that the conversation about reducing troop levels in Iraq is happening is because John McCain challenged the failed Rumsfeld strategy in Iraq and argued for the surge strategy that is responsible for the successes we’ve achieved and which Barack Obama opposed.

Shameless indeed.