Maliki Hearts Ahmadinejad

Now this is a man who’s totally worth nearly 4100 American lives. Via Matthew Yglesias:

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday tried to allay Iranian fears over a planned U.S.-Iraq security pact, saying his government would not allow Iraq to become a launching pad for an attack on its neighbor.

“Iraq today doesn’t present any threat as it used to be in the times of the former regime,” al-Maliki told Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a Sunday meeting between two leaders, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

“Today’s Iraq is a constitutional state based on the rule of law, and it seeks to develop its relations with the regional countries based on cooperation and mutual respect,” al-Maliki said.

So this is how the game is played. If you’re, say, a bellicose Arizona (or Connecticut) Senator, and you hear a presidential candidate saying he would negotiate with Iran in order to forestall a war, you call that man an appeaser. But if you hear this –

Earlier, Iran’s state-run news agency IRNA quoted the Iraqi leader as saying that “Baghdad would not allow its soil to be used as a base to damage the security of the neighboring countries, including Iran.”

– why, then, you’ve got to promise to keep the war going for between four and a hundred (or a thousand) years to protect that man’s job.