News from the Colonies - America's War in Iraq

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This Occupation Expires Dec 31, 2008


It's interesting how little attention the "liberal media" is giving to this looming deadline. Supporters of the expedition used to always fall back on the UN Mandate as justification. The Bush Administration is now scrambling to make back-room deals bypassing any semblance of Constitutional treaties. Meanwhile in Congress, the only legal appeal for an appeal for an extension of the "mandate" is packaged with a bill that any remaining Bush Administration supporters will find most unpalatable.

Sometimes I think everyone knows the whole package spoiled a long time ago, and all that is transpiring now in US opinion and policy is an embarrassed, stymied nothing- the USA is feigning meaningful activity while leaving events to take their course in a precipitous collapse of the Iraq experiment.
 
It's a boy! I mean, a timetable!

Source: WashingtonPost.com
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/08/22/BL2008082201762.html
Title: "A Timetable By Any Other Name", by Dan Froomkin
Date: August 22, 2008

So maybe it's not a timetable. Maybe the aspirational horizon line is a timeline.

Or something.

In agreeing to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June, and from the rest of the country by 2011, President Bush has apparently consented to precisely the kind of timetable that, when Democrats called for one, he dismissed as "setting a date for failure." Bush can call it an "aspirational goal" until he turns blue, but a timetable is exactly what it is, thank you very much.

Bush has repeatedly warned that politics and public opinion should have no role in the decision about when to leave Iraq, but apparently he just meant American politics and public opinion. A clear majority of Americans has favored a withdrawal timetable for several years now, putting anti-war Democrats in control of Congress in 2006.

Bush ignored them. But in the end, he bowed to the will of the Iraqis' elected representatives. After five and a half years of occupation, it was their turn to put a gun to Bush's head: The timetable was the price they demanded for agreeing to let American troops remain in the country beyond the expiration of a United Nations mandate in December.

(Froomkin)
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Friday's edition of "White House Watch" asks how this is not exactly what Bush once called an invitation to disaster. It's a fair question, and also one that Froomkin, himself—perhaps unwittingly—answers in the next paragraph: "Bush's real accomplishment here is that he has stalled long enough that none of the deadlines he has now agreed to will be on his watch. This will all be somebody else's problem."

The problem with calling the timetable a timetable is that the Bush administration has reserved for itself an out ... or, rather, what the many of us might consider a step even deeper into the quagmire. While the war party might assert that only Bush's war policies even make the timetable possible, well, that timetable extends beyond Bush's time in office. And therein lies the key. If we get to the point that we're supposed to withdraw, and things are still a disaster in Iraq, President Obama would have a serious political crisis on his hands, and President McCain would have exactly what he wants. All in all, it seems a safe bet ... for the GOP ... in 2012.

Perhaps the strongest lesson, though, is still reserved for Bush supporters: this is all it's worth. Those seven years of patriotic chest beating? It never was genuine. It never was real. It was all just politics, and that's all the thousands upon thousands of dead Iraqis are worth to Bush. And that's all our thousands of dead and wounded service personnel are worth to Bush.

Good show.

Be proud.

When we set aside the jingoism and look at what it really is—a bungled war, an American government even more dysfunctional than usual, average Americans feeling the press of a tight economy, corporate interests getting rich as hell, and much-needed domestic investments including health-care, prison reform, education, and physical infrastructure seeming farther away and more expensive than ever—George W. Bush has been the most successful conservative president in history.

Think of it this way: President McCain would have his way paved for him by the blood and bone and ashes of Americans and Iraqis alike. President Obama, at least if Bush continues to get his way, will be hamstrung.

All for politics. Congratulations, Mr. President. You truly have seen the light.
 
Politics: The Most Dangerous Game?

S.A.M. said:

I'll believe it when the last trooper is out of Iraq
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Indeed. Prime Minister al-Maliki, for the record, is apparently viewing the date with greater firmness than I had attributed to the Bush administration in my prior post:

Iraq and the United States have agreed on a date for the departure of all American troops, as part of a broader security pact they are negotiating, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said Monday.

"There is actually an agreement concluded between the two parties over the definite date, which is 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil," Mr. Maliki said, echoing what other officials have described as the content of the latest draft.

(Robertson and Mohammed)
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Nonetheless, the Bush administration continues to push the idea of wiggle room:

"These discussions continue, as we have not yet finalized an agreement," a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said on Monday. "We’re optimistic that Iraq and the U.S. can reach a mutual agreement on flexible goals for U.S. troops to continue to return on success — based on conditions on the ground — and allow Iraqi forces to provide security for a sovereign Iraq."

In a seemingly tacit recognition that a final agreement had not yet been reached, Mr. Maliki insisted that a Dec. 31, 2011 departure date was non-negotiable. "An open time ceiling is prohibited in a security agreement for the remaining international forces," he said.

Previously, Iraqi negotiators have said the 2011 date was for combat troops only, and that "training and support" forces could remain after that if invited by the Iraqi government. But they refused to give specific numbers.

Mr. Maliki also stressed that there were other parts of the security pact on which the sides had yet to agree. Those points of dispute, he said, include the scenarios under which American soldiers will be granted immunity and Iraqi approval of American military operations.

"There are some articles on which we are stopped," he said. "Unless these articles are changed, it will be hard for this agreement to pass."

(ibid)
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The question naturally arises whether this is mere politics. Al-Maliki wants to shore up support within Iraq, and President Bush hopes to improve what is shaping up to be a miserable legacy. Additionally, the White House may be looking to suck some wind from Democratic sails heading into the convention this week and election in November.

Nonetheless, the United States must gain some sort of authorization for a continued presence beyond the end of this year. Then again, if we recall Poppy Bush's Somali Adventure, it is not beyond possibility that Bush will change back to his original "no timetable" course after the election, and leave President Obama (such as the approach would demand) to take office with a renegade occupation to resolve.

The coming weeks will tell us much about the true nature of this alleged agreement, and also the Bush administration's intentions. While the situation is politically entertaining, providing grist for armchair analysts to mill over, this could also lead to yet a darker chapter in the great American tragedy known as the Bush Follies.
____________________

Notes:

Robertson, Campbell and Riyadh Mohammed. "U.S. to Leave Iraq by 2011, Maliki says". The New York Times. August 25, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html
 
all of you have something to say and have a way to take sympathy for all of the iraqi people, but yet you yourselves have never been there, have never had the opportunity to understand the real fear of never knowing who may be walking up behind you, it might be a child just asking for a bottle of water or it could be that child that the terrorist parent put up to taking a grenade within arms length of you to blow you up, you have no idea the fear and the sacrfice but yet you want to judge and put your opinion out there, you cannot tell the difference between the terrorist and the common iraqi folk anymore. They do not play that game anymore, they blend in as the common folk and then when you least expect it are blowing you up or shooting at you, so unless you are willing to go over there and experience all that iraq has to offer in this war you have no right to judge how things are done over there, as long as it is fair and within the geneva conventions, and if you read the posts and the comments that are posted under those pictures, it clearly states the iraqi folk are the ones offering up that type of punishment, we are working with iraqi forces and i feel that any iraqi force that feels their own people should get that punishment deserve every bit of it. The only thing you are willing to do is bash what myself and my brothers and sisters serving in our armed forces are wrongfully displayed doing, as the media likes to bash anything even it being the most minimal possible they blow it out of proportion and then suddenly the military is doing no good over there and the iraqi's no longer want them there, thats what you are sorely mistaken about, if you could personally be there yourselves then maybe you would understand how much the iraqi population really does want us there and is glad we are there because there has been a ridiculous increase in securtiy for them, and none of you will ever realize that because you believe only what the media has shown you, so until you are willing to sacrfice your life to fight for the freedoms we are fighting for you have no room to judge or submit your opinion. If it weren't for us, you wouldn't even have the right you display right now, freedom of speech!!!!
 
haha you have so many jokes, its ok though because you can all say what you want you do it every day along with everything else and take it all for granted, but maybe you should read and understand every right you have because of all the fighting the US Military has done over the years and then reconsider your jokes and everything bad you have ever said about us, because in the end we can say we know we made a difference, what have you done to deserve the rights you take for granted?
 
Yeah we know what the US military has been doing over the years

Its called Killing Hope

http://members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm

You're the cannon fodder who does their dirty works.

22916.jpg
 
I'm not in the US army. Raping fourteen year olds sodomising children and playing football with people's heads is what US troops do.

Look at USAF07, he is in someone else's country, killing people who have done nothing to him. And he is upset because no one supports it? Thats what I call idiocy.
 
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S.A.M. said:
I'm not in the US army. Raping fourteen year olds sodomising children and playing football with people's heads is what US troops do.

Look at USAF07, he is in someone else's country, killing people who have done nothing to him. And he is upset because no one supports it? Thats what I call idiocy.
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Yes SAM, all those perfectly Innocent Moslems from outside Iraq, who came to defend the Ummah, on jihad, rape, sodomy, murder, torture, suicide bombings, and against who? Fellow Moslems in Iraq, all is forgiven in the name of Jihad, all is permissible for Allah and Islam, in the Name of Jihad.

The idiocy is in you SAM, and your failure to condemn the action you accuse the West of doing, done by Moslems on Jihad, to fellow Moslems in Iraq.
 
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