One Utah

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who heads the Green Zone government, won’t call the draft treaty between the U.S. and Iraq a security agreement. For him, it’s all about the withdrawal.

Guarding the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Government television quoted the prime minister as describing the agreement as a framework for the pullout of U.S. forces and the regulation of “their activities within the rest of the time they’re here.”

“We don’t call it a security pact but an agreement to withdraw the troops and organize their activities during the period of their presence in Iraq,” al-Maliki was quoted as saying.

The current draft sets a deadline of Dec. 31, 2011 for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. At U.S. insistence, it leaves open the possibility of further agreements to extend the presence of American troops. Iraqi politicians are now insisting on no exceptions to an absolute, firm deadline.

The U.S. raid into Syria last weekend has also generated Iraqi demands that the agreement include a prohibition on U.S. forces launching attacks on other countries from Iraqi soil.

In the absence of a treaty or an extension of the present U.N. Security Council mandate (which Iraq opposes), the U.S. occupation of Iraq becomes illegal under international law after December 31, 2008.

It’s amazing to look back (see links below) to last spring, when the Bush administration seemed to believe that they could get Iraqi leaders to agree to an open-ended occupation and 50 permanent bases in a treaty that would lock in Bush’s “stay the course” policy for a new administration. To say that plan didn’t work would be a massive understatement– yet another fiasco-within-a-fiasco.

UPDATE: The Bush administration’s (and Senator John McCain’s) old friend Ahmed Chalabi has re-emerged as a “key figure” in Iranian efforts to scuttle the treaty.

Previous One Utah posts:
Iraq: End in Sight! (October 23)
Bush Sets Iraq ‘Surrender Date’: December 31, 2011 (October 15)
Bush Administration to Iraq: No Withdrawal Timetable for You! (October 7)
Iraq Withdrawal: Reading the Fine Print (August 11)
Iraq Withdrawal: They Were Against It Before They Were For It (July 30)
Bye-Bye Green Zone (July 14)
The Iraq Endgame Takes Shape (June 18)
‘More abominable than the occupation’ (June 10)
Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under permanent US occupation (June 5)
Iraq Index and an Update on the Permanent Occupation Treaty (May 31)

This entry was posted Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 9:43 am and is filed under Disaster, Iraq, National Politics, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.