Iraq’s foreign minister is saying that any US-Iraq security deal must contain a, “Very clear timeline,” for US withdrawal.
Sounds like that qualifier laden “time horizon” that Bush and His Evil Minions™ keep talking about is as dead as a proverbial doornail.
So the US Army is forced to up their own “Swift Boat” corps, and members of the 101st Airborn are now on boats.
I’m sure that they will do a good job, and it appears that these guys are gung ho about this, but the Navy should handling things like patrolling the Euphrates river.
As Galrahn notes, “Imagine a world where the Navy’s leadership was excited about doing the Navy’s job as those Army guys reportedly are.”
According to this translation of an article in Al Sabaah, the US military would lose its unilateral arrest powers, and there would be a withdrawl in the 2010-11 time frame, which sounds a lot like Barack Obama’s game plan.
It seems to be tied into provincial elections somehow, see Fail below, so I’m not sure where everything is right now.
H/T Juan Cole
Ron Suskind, in his latest book, the Way of the world, says that the White House ordered that the CIA forge a back-dated letter between the head of Iraqi security and Saddam Hussein showing al Queida ties after the fall of Baghdad to deflect attention away from the lack of WMDs.
The National Security Act of 1947 specifically forbids the CIA from taking actions that have their primary intent of deceiving the American People.
So, what will happen?
Nothing.
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
They could get together a quorum of legislators in order to vote, and the issue of Kirkuk is still poisoning everything.
Seriously, anyone who thinks that a $10.7 billion purchase that includes such items as Abrams tanks is a response to actual military needs is full of it.
There are still thousands of tanks and APCs out there for them to lose, but someone in the Pentagon or the State Department has twisted their arms to buy equipment that they do not need.
They won’t be engaging in a major shooting war with anyone for the next 20+ years, and under those circumstances, T-72s and BMPs will do the job just fine.
His name was Bruce Ivins, and it appears that his arrest was imminent.
More important than the possibility, and no evidence has been presented, that the Anthrax mailer has been identified is the question about who lied to the press about the presence of Bentonite in the spores.
Not only was this completely untrue, there were none in the samples, but it was used to point a finger at Iraq, which, unlike the US, used Bentonite in its bio-weapons program.
Glenn Breenwald has a rundown of how the press, ABC in particular, were used to finger Iraq for the Anthrax by mentioning non-existent Bentonite.
Who were the government sources who were lying to the press? Was Bruce Ivins one of them? Was this a part of a concerted effort to gin up support for the attack on Iraq?
If there is anything to be learned from the disastrous counter-insurgency experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is that the use of air power must be kept to a minimum, because the collateral damage crates more supporters for the insurgents.
Of course, this bit of knowledge appears not to have registered with the USAF, which is looking at an expansion of its role as US troops draw down.
This is why we need to be completely out. Every bomb we drop risks creating anothere Osama bin Laden.
While the military press, and military experts, have been wringing their hands over the flight of junior officers from the military, I’m not concerned.
The US military has 1 officers for every 5 enlisted men, twice the historical rate of 1:10, so I think that there is plenty of margin there.
That being said, Salon’s report that the army is now being forced to promote unqualified soldiers to senior NCO positions to meet the challenges of the Iraq campaign is very troubling.
Senior NCOs are the heart and soul of the army, and when the NCO corps starts failing, the whole military does.
They are in summer recess now, and because of a Kurdish walkout, they took no action on a $21 billion supplementary budget.
The provincial elections are still unresolved too, though there will be a special session to attempt to resolve this.
Heck of a job, Bushie.
It looks like the status of forces agreement is back in active negotiation, complete with bullsh@% “time horizon”.
The Bush administration’s embrace of a flexible timeline for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq has accelerated negotiations between Washington and Baghdad over a long-term security pact, officials from both sides said.
The optimism marks a turnaround from just a month ago, when big differences seemed to have deadlocked talks over the terms of a continued American military presence in the country. In June, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the talks were at a “dead end,” dimming hopes of reaching a deal by July 31 — a goal the Bush administration has pushed hard to meet.
This month, however, the White House said it had agreed to a “general time horizon” for troop withdrawals, breaking from its long-held public resistance to the notion. The change has helped overcome differences on other issues, such as immunity for U.S. troops, negotiators on both sides said.
…
Great googley moogley.
This has been a problem for over 5 years, and they are finally addressing it.
My guess is that someone ran the numbers, and determined that enough of them had fled to other countries, or had been killed, that they would not have too much demand.
Jalal Talabanivetoed the legislation because it puts off a vote in Kirkuk, where the Kurds, including Talibani, want a vote to establish governance of the oil rich region.
This Iraq thing is going so damn well, huh?
John Sidney McCain III barely graduated from Annapolis, 894 of 899, and then only because because daddy was a high ranking admiral.
Now, he gets the escalation in Iraq wrong, claiming that the so-called “Anbar Awakening” was the result of the “surge” even though it pre-dated Bush’s first mention of escalation in Iraq by 6 months.
Of course, this is Katie Couric’s CBS, so when the gaff was made, they edited it out, because by the rules of the “kule kidz” in the press corps, any gaff by McCain is an honest mistake, and the public must be shielded from seeing the “straight talker” when he shows himself to be a complete pratt.
Yep, he’s now saying that it’s possible that US combat troops could be out of Iraq in two years.
Flip-flop.
Because his statement condemning a withdrawal timetable is right out of the Republican spin machine, and is clearly an attempt to influence the election.
Obama needs to make a clear statement that such a role is inappropriate for an active duty officer, particularly a general.
It ain’t just the Department of Justice that will need to be de-Bushified in 2009.
But he says something that I the punditocracy has studiously avoided saying until now:
In private conversations, Clinton has expressed the view that Obama’s emphasis on Iraq — her Senate vote for it, his against it — defeated her.
While this is blinding clear to everyone else in the world, to the pundits, where being wrong on Iraq is a sign of good judgment, acknowledging this fact is the political reality that dare not speak its name.
I will note that he gets one part wrong: Obama wasn’t in the Senate for the vote.
The New York Times reviewed der Speigel’s tape of the Maliki interview, and has pronounced the original statement endorsing Obama’s plan as accurate:
But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.
(emphasis mine)
What’s more, we now have a statement from Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman who walked back the statement under pressure from Bush and His Evil Minions™, that having all troops out in 2010 would be a good thing, so they just endorsed Barack Obama’s position again.
There’s a surprise. The walkback from Maliki’s endorsement of Obama’s withdrawal plan came after a call from a Bush admin official.
And a horse’s head, one would assume.