Bush and Blair agree Iraq exit plan to end occupation

Bush and Blair agree Iraq exit plan to end occupation

· Black Hawk crashes kill 17 US soldiers
· Troops to stay until 2006 as power shifts to Baghdad

Kamal Ahmed in London and Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday November 16, 2003
The Observer

President George Bush and Tony Blair have agreed an exit strategy for pulling out of Iraq, officially ending the occupation next year while committing troops to the region until 2006.

In a move to head off growing criticism that the security situation in Iraq is spiralling out of control and that moves to greater political autonomy for the Iraqis need to be accelerated, the two leaders will make the blueprint the centrepiece of their discussions during Bush's state visit to Britain this week.

<snip>

British officials told The Observer that, although the occupation of Iraq would be over next year, it was likely that troops would need to stay, possibly until 2006. 'The whole process will take two to three years, as in Afghanistan,' said a senior Number 10 official closely involved in the Iraq negotiations.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1086421,00.html

Don't believe a word you say

U.S. troops still on the ground in Iraq.

What the fudge is actually changing, again?

I'm sure that if there is a handover, it will be accompanied by pomp and circumstance... and some wonderful ShrubCo photo-op. If they do it close enough to the election, they can avoid the kind of negative fall-out the Lincoln landing caused.

But, as I've said before, the insurgents, guerrillas, or whatever you want to call them, also have their eye on the calendar. And I expect hostilities to stay hot and get hotter as the election approaches. The Iraqis know US public opinion and time are in their favor.

They really think they are in control.

does what exactly?

Things are going so well there - didn't we just lose another military person there in the past 24 hours?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1086197,00.html

Last week the resurgent Taliban began striking into the cities and against heavily armed coalition troops. Their efforts were once limited to hit-and-run attacks on far-flung government outposts or aid projects and the assassination of moderate clerics. But in the past eight days they have attacked a column of armoured vehicles near the Pakistani border, killing a Romanian soldier, and detonated a series of bombs in Kandahar city itself and in Qalat, capital of Zabul province. The Taliban's leaders are also refusing to surrender a Turkish engineer who was kidnapped two weeks ago while working on the key road from Kabul to Kandahar. Instead, they issued threats to kidnap Western journalists.

The Taliban are expanding fast. The deputy governor of Zabul admits most of his province is now controlled by the militia. Most of Oruzgan province and around half of Kandahar province is now beyond government authority.

" the Iraqi Governing Council set up by the Americans would see its sovereignty transferred to a transitional government picked by delegates to a national conference. That body would then plan for national elections and the drawing up of a constitution for Iraq."

U.S. selectees make their own delegate selections who then make the decisions on how, where, and why to have elections and maybe even a constitution.

Freakin brilliant...And like some governing council fool said, *those* people can ask the U.S. to keep troops in Iraq.

And I bet the Poodle won't be in a position to be taking orders from the American President either.

I hope this tragedy this weekend doesn't increase Shrub's or anyone else's resolve to stay for vengence.

Pretty obvious--keep the four bases, and once he is reelected, he will start up his next conquest.

Jerks.

It doesn't get more Orwellian than that...

We've got a secret plan. Trust us.

'Nuff said.

by making a commitment to keep troops in Iraq well into 2006. Tony and Bush must both go down to defeat!

Hand over power to Iraqies so they can make legitimate laws. Leave your troops there so they make the RIGHT legitimate laws.
I daresay the resistance may see what can be done to cock this plan up.

This is more typical equivocation from the Bushies. We see in it a legalistic description of ending the occupation (turning power over to a trnsitional government), but US troops remain until 2006. As long as foreign troops remain on Iraqi soil to enforce whatever decisions are made by the authorities, it is an occupation. As long as the Iraqi authorities are making decisions to sell the country to transnational corporations, it is an occupation.

The occupation will end when an Iraqi government that is responsible to the Iraqi people assumes control and makes decisions about Iraq's economic infrastructure for the benefit of the Iraqi people. Until then, it's a colonial occupation and one that the Iraqis have every right and every reason to resist.

Wouldn't make sense to pull out and leave no one guarding Halliburton.

they've promised to end it. Though of course, the troops will remain indefinitely as the guests of the new Iraqi government....