One Utah

At today’s White House press conference, Press Secretary Dana Perino tried to claim that the Bush administration has not really agreed to a “surrender date” (the term she used last year to describe a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq).

QUESTION: The President has said for months that he opposes any timetable and that any decision should be based on the conditions on the ground. How much is the latest agreement a departure, if not a repudiation — ?

PERINO: [W]hen you work with a partner on a negotiation, you have to concede some points. One of the points that we conceded was that we would establish these aspirational dates.

Perino was lying, of course. The Iraqi Parliament is poised to do what the U.S. Congress could not: set a firm deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Iraq. Over the weekend, Iraq’s cabinet overwhelmingly approved a proposed treaty that calls for a full withdrawal of American forces from the country by the end of 2011. The parliament is expected to vote on the treaty a week from today.

Spencer Ackerman:

“The Bush administration intended the SOFA process to entrench the occupation. Instead it gave the Iraqi government the means to end it. And that’s the best-possible way for the war to end: with the Iraqi government — the one we’ve disingenuously told the world we’re in Iraq to support — showing its political maturation to get us out the day after tomorrow. And out actually means out. The SOFA demands that every last U.S. serviceman is on a plane by December 31, 2011. Obama’s plan for a 30,000-troop residual force? Officially overtaken by events. As I say, the impact of this appears not to have sunken in. The Iraqis have forced an end to the war.”

Juan Cole explains how the treaty will effectively terminate the U.S. occupation:

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said that as soon as the agreement is passed, Iraq will go to the United Nations Security Council to ask to be removed from Chapter 7 of the UN Charter and for permission to abrogate Order 17 issued by U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer.

Of order 17, Tom Engelhardt wrote:

‘ Order 17 is a document little-read today, yet it essentially granted to every foreigner in the country connected to the occupation enterprise the full freedom of the land, not to be interfered with in any way by Iraqis or any Iraqi political or legal institution. Foreigners–unless, of course, they were jihadis or Iranians–were to be “immune from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their Sending States,” even though American and coalition forces were to be allowed the freedom to arrest and detain in prisons and detention camps of their own any Iraqis they designated worthy of that honor.’

The Iraqi government believes it can by signing this bilateral agreement with Bush get back its full sovereignty and escape the humiliation of being in receivership to the United Nations and having Bremer’s law give foreign carpetbaggers the run of Iraq. This belief explains why even the proud Nuri al-Maliki is willing to sign on the dotted line.

A recent One Utah commenter said:

To you it was about oil or establishing permanent bases. To us it was about removing a brutal dictator that threatened a vital region including our allies. …We define victory as leaving Iraq as an independent nation strong enough to defend themselves against their neighbors and terrorists from within and without and avoiding the extreme Islamists from taking power. If we can return with that achieved then we have indeed been victorious.

Interestingly enough, before the invasion of Iraq there was no international threat from Saddam Hussein’s regime. Iraq was independent, capable of defending itself and harbored no terrorists. Extreme Islamists had no political power there.

So, the right wing now defines “victory in Iraq” as the status quo ante bellum? Even that may no longer be fully achievable, given the political power Moqtada al-Sadr and other Shiite religious leaders have gained over the past five years and the tremendous influence the Iranians now have over Iraqi affairs.

UPDATE: The Sadrists are going to try to block a vote on the withdrawal treaty on the grounds that it requires a two-thirds super majority. Moqtada al-Sadr continues to demand an immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq.

UPDATE: Mullen On Iraq Troop Deal: We Could Always Just Change The Terms! Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen shows he doesn’t understand what’s about to happen in Iraq.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has more on what the Bush administration has agreed to, whether they know it or not!

This entry was posted Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Disaster, Iraq, National Politics, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.