This one is barometrically significent more than anything else.

Marc Lynch has a good rundown of an admittedly obscure tempest: a frequently mistaken right-wing New York Post columnist insisted, by twisting the words of Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, that Barack Obama tried to delay negotiations to withdraw troops from Iraq. (We're meant to believe that despite the fact that withdrawal is Obama's Iraq position. But anyway!) Yadda yadda yadda, the meme hangs around the fever swamps for awhile, but now Zebari calls the story "misrepresented." Myth, meet reality; the universe is restored to harmony.

What's important about this? Not so much, really, from a substance perspective. But from an international-relations perspective, it's noteworthy for one reason: Zebari didn't have to say a thing. He has only one reason to speak up: because he can read the same polls as everyone else and can see that, barring catastrophe, he'll have to deal with an Obama administration come January. Better, then, to give the likely next president the equivalent of a fruit basket. Much like the Iraqi prime minister did a few months ago.

Crossposted to The Streak.