The Washington Times Report On Obama's Attempt To Sway Iraqis

Yesterday I posted that the Drudge Report had a screaming red headline that the Democrat presidential nominee, Sen. Messiah Barack Obama, was trying to sway Iraqi officials to force the Bush administration to seek congressional approval to keep American troops in Iraq.
According to the Washington Times, Sen. Messiah Barack went to Iraq two weeks after he all but clinched the Democrat party presidential nod and tried to persuade the Iraqi government to wait until there was a new administration in Washington. Presumably one led by Messiah Barack.
There appear to be two issues at work here.
One, the obvious, is whether a sitting United States senator acting on his or her own should be conducting contrary foreign policy to the sitting administration.
FTR, I do not care who is president. If it was not authorized by a sitting administration, then it is freelancing. And it is wrong. And it appears that this was clearly not approved by the Bush administration.
Secondary is whether a presidential candidate should be doing this kind of travelling in the middle of his or her campaign for president. I do not think that going on fact-finding trips is a bad thing. And, it was Sen. Messiah Barack's second trip to Iraq. So, on that score, it is not a real issue.
Back to the obvious.
It at the very least in bad taste to do what Sen. Messiah Barack did. Some of the justification is that Sen. Messiah Barack was doing his freelancing as a member of the senate Foreign Relations Committee.
So, I am not certain that this is going to be all that much of a big deal. It had already been reported by Amir Taheri in the New York Post about this meeting. And it did not get much traction.
What it does is show that campaigns need to understand its boundaries. In this case, Team Obama seemed to at worst overstep it's boundaries. But, it sets a dangerous precedent for whoever becomes the next president.