It must have been a faintly chilling moment for Barack Obama. He had spent half the week talking up the Iraqi government as responsive and inclusive, mature enough to sustain the international alliance growing to fight militants of the Islamic State. Then came those bizarre press comments.
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The week had begun with a success, or what passes for success when one is dealing with the reluctant re-entry into what may well be an unwinnable war.
Critics had declared that the President and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, had failed even before the first hurdle because they had been unable to muster the support of key Arab nations.
"No one believes President Obama's strategy in Iraq will work — not the Republicans, not the Democrats, not the Generals, not the American people," wrote Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld in a scathing Washington Post opinion piece published on Monday. "So it's little wonder that our allies are questioning the strategy as well and finding ways to avoid making specific commitments."
Less that 24 hours later America and five Sunni Arab nations - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan began bombing targets in Syria.
The following day, after a bilateral meeting with the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, President Obama said, "One of the things I'm very impressed with, however, is the fact that Prime Minister Abadi understands that in order for Iraq to succeed it's not just a matter of a military campaign; it's also the need for political outreach to all factions within the country. And I've been very impressed with Prime Minister Abadi's vision.
"Since he took over the prime-ministership, he has reached out systematically to all the peoples of Iraq. He has articulated a vision of reform and a commitment to moving forward with many of the laws that had previously stalled but offer the potential of unleashing energy and entrepreneurship inside of Iraq."
When he addressed the General Assembly the next day President Obama was uncharacteristically forceful. He denounced Russian aggression in Ukraine and having listed Islamic State atrocities he said: "No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning -no negotiation - with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death."
He called for the world to join this effort, a call he could make with more authority in the wake of the alliance bombings. On Friday, Britain, Belgium and Denmark overcame domestic political hurdles to join the coalition.
But by then the global leaders who had gathered in New York, including Prime Minister Tony Abbott, must have been wondering about the reliability of Haider al-Abadi.
On Thursday he had stunned a small group of American reporters covering the General Assembly, telling them that Iraq had "credible" evidence that Islamic State terrorists planned to bomb Paris and New York subway systems.
"They plan to have attacks in the metros of Paris and the US," he said. "I asked [Iraqi intelligence] for more credible information. I asked for names. I asked for details, for cities, you know, dates. And from the details I have received, yes, it looks credible."
US officials were stunned. They had no information about an attack, either from their own sources or from Iraq's. Soon Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Obama, said the US had "not confirmed any specific threat".
"What we've consistently said to the Iraqis is if they have information that is relevant to terrorist activity or terrorist plotting, that they can and should share that through our intelligence and law enforcement channels," Rhodes said.
"We would certainly take seriously any information they are learning," he said.
The New York mayor, Bill de Blasio, reassured New Yorkers they were safe and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran, Brett McGurk, told CNN there was no "specific credible threat whatsoever that they have uncovered to the United States."
Nor could French authorities shed any light on the statement.
On Friday, the Iraqi President Fuad Masum seemed just as confused as he sat down for a long Q and A session during a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York.
"Personally I don't have any information about this," he said. "I have not heard or seen exactly what he said."
"It could be an expectation of this to happen by a sleeper cell and they retaliate - they could resort to such things.
"The nature of the statement, how it was made, was not very clear and I tried to ask him but he's on his way to Baghdad on a plane, that's why I could not get hold of him."
Critics note that for all its rhetoric neither Abadi's government nor Iraq's military is yet reformed or representative. In fact his cabinet is not yet complete.
He is, as President Obama insists, the key ally on what many predict will be a long and complicated military campaign that will fail without the American troops that America is not willing to send.
His comments on Thursday hardly inspired much faith.
