Did He Pull A "Fast One"?

I read a rumor the other day, which I now cannot locate, that Obama pulled a “fast one” on us, and if it’s true I’m going to say “good for him.”

This “slick trick” has to do with the troop withdrawal schedule from Iraq and negotiations with Maliki about what kind of approval Obama would accept. The supposition is that Maliki would have granted the necessary immunity to obtain an extension, but Obama said that Maliki’s approval was insufficient and that he would only accept a deal which was approved by the entire Iraqi Parliment.

The reason that was important is that supposedly Obama never actually wanted the extension, and knew that Maliki would approve it but the Iraqi Parliment would not. By doing what he did he could appear to be trying to get the extension, thereby placating the Neocons at home and immunizing himself, as much as possible anyway, from charges that he “bailed out on Iraq” while still getting what he actually wanted, which was to get our troops the hell out of Dodge.

I’m not as good at reading Obama’s mind as some other people seem to think they are, so I have no idea as to the validity of this theory, but I rather hope it’s true. If so, it would make Obama smart in more ways than one, in that he wanted the right thing, keeping the Bush timetable, and he was extraordinarily clever in his manner of going about doing it.