White House accidentally emails story to reporters on Maliki supports Obama's troop withdrawal timetable

This is from ABC News:

The White House this afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined "Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan - magazine."

The story relayed how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that "he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … ‘U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,'" the prime minister said.

The White House employee had intended to send the article to an internal distribution list, ABC News' Martha Raddatz reports, but hit the wrong button.

The misfire comes at an odd time for Bush foreign policy, at a time when Obama's campaign alleges the president is moving closer toward Obama's recommendations about international relations -- sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, discussing a "general time horizon" for U.S. troop withdrawal and launching talks with Iran.

Something tells me that the Bush administration just crapped a huge brick in its pants when they sent this email out. First this was a huge goof on part of the Bush White House, in that they wanted to send this story to their partisan pundits and bloggers so that they would use the story to attack the Obama campaign on the policy of a U.S. troop withdrawal time line. But more importantly, this story reveals something else about the Bush administration's pro-war policy in Iraq. It shows fear within the Bush administration and the Republican Party. Iraqi Prime Minister Malikis' support of Democratic candidate Barack Obama's troop withdrawal timetable provides a powerful opening to the American people on how to exit a war that almost two-thirds of the American people oppose. They may not have previously supported Obama's timetable, but with the Iraqi prime minister endorsing Obama's plan, then this is a powerful incentive for ending this failed Bush war that the American people are opposed to. It completely undercuts the entire pro-war positions of both the Bush administration and GOP presidential candidate John McCain. The Bush administration's plan was to send this story out to their partisan hacks and bloggers in order to both attack Obama and discredit Maliki in supporting a strategy that would cause both the U.S. and Iraq to surrender to the al Qaeda terrorists. Instead, the email was sent to reporters, magnifying this latest screw-up by the Bush White House.