Remember during the 1980 election between Ronald Reagan and then-President Jimmy Carter, when the hostages in Iran were not released until after Reagan was officially sworn in as a slap to Jimmy Carter?

Well, if this story is true, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, what is Obama trying to pull?

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”

“However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open.” Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is “illegal,” he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the “weakened Bush administration,” Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a “realistic withdrawal date.” They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Here is a man whose most famous act of politics is boasting he was against the Iraq war and wants to bring the troops home in 16 months after he is sworn in, and he’s trying to make an under the table agreement with the Iraqis to let our troops stay longer so he can get the credit for returning them if and when he is sworn in as president.

And remember all the talk about us not following UN guidlines to go to war? All of a sudden he wants us to “seek an extension of the UN mandate.”

Is he willing to play with the lives of our military in order to satisfy his huge ego? We have already done the biggest part of turning over the provinces of Iraq to Iraqi control. Thirteen of the eighteen Iraqi provinces are now in control of the Iraqi government.

How much longer does he want to keep the troops there so they don’t have to come home under the orders of a “weakened Bush administration”?

He’d better hope his buddies in the large mainstream press keep this under their hats because if a lot of the electorate reads it he’s toast. Not to mention despicable.