It looks like the Washington Post got the hint and stopped burying the al-Maliki story, with this Dan Balz headline: Obama Makes War Gains: Maliki's Embrace of Withdrawal Timeline Confounds McCain Which appears to be the "standalone story" that Greg Sargent was asking about. In it Balz even corrects their previous blunder (emphasizing an alleged eight month difference in their comments as the most significant thing).

Then on Monday, after Maliki met with Obama, his spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said the Iraqis were working toward a deadline that would call for U.S. combat forces to be out of Iraq by the end of 2010, at most eight months after Obama's timetable [emphasis mine]