On Tuesday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith talked to "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric about Barack Obama’s trip to Iraq and asked: "He's had a very full plate here the last three or four days. Is it -- is there a way to sort of gauge what the Senator has been able to accomplish thus far?" Couric, who along with the other network anchors is following Obama on the trip, responded: "Well, I think in his time in Iraq, and as you know, Harry, he's still there, has been very, very productive."

Couric then went on to describe the Obama’s good fortune: "And let's say simply serendipitous that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, after some clarification over the weekend and going back and forth, virtually endorsed Senator Obama's plan to have a timetable for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, U.S. combat troops by the year 2010." She also pointed out that Maliki’s "endorsement": "...was somewhat surprising, disconcerting, and embarrassing to the Bush Administration." Couric concluded: "So in terms of a withdrawal strategy, he [Obama] and Prime Minister Maliki are definitely on the same page."

Bill Maher gave an unsatirizable interview on Tuesday evening’s "The Situation Room" on CNN, spending a large portion of his ten-minute interview attacking, among others, General David Petraeus, Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, and Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, labeling them "stooges" for President Bush. When host Wolf Blitzer asked about the recent congressional testimony of the general and the ambassador, Maher parroted the MoveOn.org line. "Well, it was a White House-written report. We know that. Bush has an interesting little scam going. He also quoted in his speech on Thursday night, Maliki. And he said basically that the Iraqi leadership is asking us to stay. So, in other words, he puts words into his stooges' mouths, and then, he quotes them."

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The New York Times front-page "News Analysis" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg delved into President Bush's dissatisfaction with Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his failure to bring Sunnis and Shiites together politically -- and strangely finds Bush "already facing skepticism" about the troop surge in Iraq (um, didn't that surge start some months ago?)

"It was not quite the vote of no confidence delivered by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who on Monday said Mr. Maliki should quit. But it was a striking attempt by the White House to distance itself from the Maliki government before September, when the president’s troop buildup faces an intense review on Capitol Hill.