Amir Taheri in the New York Post, a damning piece, but typical.

This tells us everything we want to know about Barack Obama.

“While campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,’ Zebari said in an interview. Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops — and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its ‘state of weakness and political confusion.’ … Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet. … According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years — departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues. Even then, the dates mentioned are only ‘notional,’ making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.”

Now, you might be saying, “What’s the big deal about this?”

Well, two things. ..

Number one, Obama has been clamoring for these troops to get out of there now, now, now.

Obama was part of the cabal that wanted defeat of the US military this year. He wanted defeat of the US military this year. He wanted them out this year. He wanted to hang defeat around the neck of George W. Bush and run against that.

Now all of a sudden he wants a delay in the withdrawal of troops so that he can say he did it and fulfill a campaign pledge to the liberal fringe nuts.

What does this remind you of?

Here we have a genuine October Surprise story.

Remember when they falsely accused George Bush 41 of going over to Paris to make sure the Iranians kept the US hostages until after the November election 1980 so that Reagan would get the credit. There was never any basis for that story, just the seriousness of the charge, there was never any basis to the truth of that story and yet here’s Obama doing exactly what Democrats accused George Bush 41 of doing in 1980.

You people on the left, do you understand your guy wants troops in Iraq until at least 2012 now, if out then, so that he can be the guy in charge of saying “I got ’em out.”

I guess now we know what Obama did one night in Baghdad…

We knew that Obama’s summer trip was bad, but we had no idea he was playing games with our troops for his benefit. So he goes to Berlin, he trashes the country, skipped a visit to wounded soldiers when he was in Berlin, let’s not forget this.

And now we found out he’s playing games with the lives of our troops, maybe even a Logan Act violation, going there and asking the Iraqi guy, as a mere senator, “Hey, can’t you delay your political action here?”

That trip overseas was a disaster.

This is not experience, this is not judgment, this is change, but it’s breaking a law and his faith with his followers and our troops. Barack Obama asking the Iraqi foreign minister to keep US troops longer than the commanders on the ground think they are needed.

Stop and think of that!

Obama was in Colorado. He’s following Palin around. McCain was in Jacksonville, and Obama, who was in Colorado, somewhere in the Denver area, and here’s Obama describing pain trickling up.

OBAMA: For eight years we’ve had policies that have shredded consumer protections and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle class Americans. The result is the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression. I certainly don’t fault Senator John McCain for these problems, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to, because it’s the same philosophy we’ve had for the last eight years.

And…

OBAMA: One that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. It’s a philosophy that says even commonsense regulations are unnecessary, one that says we should just stick our heads in the sand and ignore economic problems until they spiral into crisis. The pain has trickled up.

Well, then you ought to be damn happy. If the pain’s trickled up, it means your voters are in pain all the time, now there’s pain at the top, it’s trickling up, you should be happy. You want people in pain up there.

Again I ask, does Obama sound presidential here? No, seriously. I ask this without bias.

I’m asking you to genuinely consider this, does he sound presidential there?

Well, this sent the Obama campaign into a tizzy because this is a violation of law.

This borders on treason. He’s a presidential candidate. He cannot go over and negotiate for the United States on matters like this. Aside from the hypocrisy that was Obama promising everybody to get these troops out of there immediately when he was elected, this would push pack the withdrawal easily to 2011 or 2012.

He’s just a hypocrite on this. He wanted Bush to withdraw the troops so that Bush would lose the war, the Democrats would say Bush lost the war, but now that the prospect of winning the war could redound to Obama, he wants the troops there. He wants to be the one to declare victory, he wants to be the one to bring the troops out on his terms, and he asked the Iraqis to hold them. So his campaign sends out this denial.

The campaign went nuts suggesting that this did not happen, and in the process of denying it, they confirmed it.

“Obama’s national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri’s article bore ‘as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial.'” And then she said this in the statement, “In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a ‘Strategic Framework Agreement’ governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office.”

Well, that’s exactly what the Iraqi guy said! So they send out this press release denying it, saying Amir Taheri, he’s a conservative Iranian, he’s lying about this, and in their denial they confirm it. They confirm exactly what Amir Taheri said, that Obama told the Iraqis they should not rush through a strategic framework agreement governing the future of US forces until after Bush leaves office, which is exactly what Amir Taheri said.

Obama went to Iraq and interfered with US diplomacy and is now denying it.

Shocking… mmm, guess not.