Richard WarnickIraq Withdrawal: They Were Against It Before They Were For It
President Bush now wants a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. I assumed you would read this while sitting, otherwise I apologize and I’ll give you a moment to get up off the floor…
“Kilroy was here”
Remember when anyone who favored withdrawal was accused of wanting to “surrender,” and betray the troops?
“If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher.”
Last year, when Congress passed a bill requiring a timetable, President Bush instantly vetoed it. White House spokesperson Dana Perino released a statement minutes after the vote, calling the bill “disappointing legislation that insists on a surrender date…”
They have always equated withdrawal with surrender. What changed their mind? Green Zone PM al-Maliki decided to back Senator Obama’s 16-month withdrawal timetable. In the words of an old college professor of mine, that development caused them furiously to think!
Here’s what they came up with, via Missing Links:
Bilateral talks: “The fix is in”
Mashraq Abbas, Baghdad bureau chief for AlHayat, having talked to many Iraqi participants and observers of the bilateral negotiations, believes the final outcome will finesse the issue of “withdrawal schedule” by something like the following timetable:
(a) By the end of 2008: Turnover of security in all provinces to the Iraqi security forces, and withdrawal of the American forces to their camps.
(b) By the end of 2009: Completion of the withdrawal from Iraq of around half of the American troops currently in the country.
(c) By the end of 2010, start of talks respecting a permanent treaty, and defined schedules (of withdrawal) but which will guarantee the presence of American forces in a group of bases for an additional three years, renewable (the American negotiators want this guaranteed period to be five years).
For the Bush administration and its neo-conservative backers, the advantage of signing this kind of document before the end of the Bush administration will be a way of snatching “victory” from the jaws of “failure”, by setting up a new theme: Establishment of a “new Iraq”, friendly to the United States, in the heart of the Middle East, and next door to Iran. In this way they hope to neutralize the Obama withdrawal proposal as a campaign issue. Moreover, by calling it a memorandum of understanding instead of an agreement or a treaty, they plan to circumvent any legislative scrutiny, in either country.
This deal, even without ratification by the U.S. Senate or the Iraqi Parliament, is intended to get past the December 31, 2008 expiration of the U.N. mandate.
Apparently the Iraqis will be giving up their demand that U.S. forces evacuate the Green Zone this year.
How to explain the Mother Of All Switcheroos? Simple, really. They will tell us that the “conditions on the ground” in Iraq have showed dramatic improvement. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has been run on lies from the get-go, why tell the truth now?
UPDATE: Military groupie Michael Yon says “the war in Iraq is over.” Afghanistan is where it’s at now, he’s going there after finishing a vacation in Nepal (H/T Utah Rattler).
