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From the LA Times:

In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Maliki embraced Obama’s plan, saying: “That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.” Maliki said he was not making an endorsement in the presidential race.

The endorsement of the Iraqi Prime Minister for a plan that calls for combat withdrawal - an effective end to the Iraq War - is enormous news. Ironically only the LA Times fronted the story, owing to pressure exerted from the White House for the Iraqi government to issue a retractment, which they (vaguely) did. When the New York Times ran the story they ran it as a story focused on the implications for al-Maliki given the disapproval his comments generated with senior White House and US military leaders. Even so, this offers the most real possibility of an actual conclusion to the Iraq War we’ve had since it began. The lead of Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki, effectively supports presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s 16-month time-table for withdrawal, and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has repeatedly stated that he would respect Iraq’s sovereignty on the issue of withdrawal (though his plan calls for no immediate withdrawal and indefinite military presence). It’s unlikely that McCain would actually advocate such a speedy withdrawal since it would be near political suicide, but this is the clearest hope the American public has had yet for an actual termination to the War. A full rundown with the official responses of the candidates is here.

Related: While the mainstream press was slow to run this story, The White House press corps inadvertantly emailed this story to their entire list (instead of the intended internal list) immediately after Der Speigel, the source of the Maliki interview, ran the story on the wire.

From an Elvis Australia fan club interview with Nixon’s former White House Deputy for Domestic Affairs, Egil ‘Bud’ Krogh:

I thought, ‘Well, you know, this guy seems to be saying the things that that Richard Nixon would like to hear, so let’s see if we can’t set up a meeting’. So I wrote a memo to the president suggesting some talking points and, and Dwight Chapin wrote a memo to then-Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, to get approval for this meeting. And it came back approved.
But anyway, we walked in a half an hour later into the Oval Office and the president got up. It was a little bit awkward at first, because I’m not sure that Elvis really believed that he was there. They had a really weird discussion about a lot of things that had nothing to do with the talking points I had written. Elvis was telling the president how difficult it was to play in Las Vegas. The president said, ‘I understand, Las Vegas is a tough town’. And then Elvis said, ‘And you know, the Beatles came over here and made a lot of money and said some un-American things’. And the president looked at me, like, ‘Well, what’s this about the Beatles?’
And then the real reason for the trip finally came out as Elvis said, ‘Mr. President, can you get me a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs?’ And the president looked and he said, ‘Bud, can we get him a badge?’ And I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, if you want to get him a badge, we can do that’. He said, ‘Well, get him a badge’.

The whole article is worth a read. This is also a good time to revisit the best use of Elvis music in the last decade.