"Sorry, Barack, You've lost Iraq"

Source: Newsweek

In remarks to the traveling press, delivered from the Third Army operation command center here, Bush said that negotiations were about to begin on a long-term strategic partnership with the Iraqi government modeled on the accords the United States has with Kuwait and many other countries. Crocker, who flew in from Baghdad with Petraeus to meet with the president, elaborated: "We're putting our team together now, making preparations in Washington," he told reporters. "The Iraqis are doing the same. And in the few weeks ahead, we would expect to get together to start this negotiating process." The target date for concluding the agreement is July, says Gen. Doug Lute, Bush's Iraq coordinator in the White House--in other words, just in time for the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Most significant of all, the new partnership deal with Iraq, including a status of forces agreement that would then replace the existing Security Council mandate authorizing the presence of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq, will become a sworn obligation for the next president. It will become just another piece of the complex global security framework involving a hundred or so countries with which Washington now has bilateral defense or security cooperation agreements. Last month, Sen. Hillary Clinton urged Bush not to commit to any such agreement without congressional approval. The president said nothing about that on Saturday, but Lute said last fall that the Iraqi agreement would not likely rise to the level of a formal treaty requiring Senate ratification. Even so, it would be difficult if not impossible for future presidents to unilaterally breach such a pact.

As far as the number of U.S. troops that would remain in Iraq under such a pact, the administration is considering changes that could also pre-empt anything the Democrats have in mind. Gen. Petraeus told reporters that he and Pentagon planners were also working on a new "intellectual construct" for a U.S. troop presence in Iraq beyond the planned withdrawal of five brigade combat teams, two Marine battalions and the Marine Expeditionary Unit by the end of July. "We're going to continue to play with this, if you will," Petraeus said. "We literally meet a couple of times a week and keep working this along." Asked whether he and the Pentagon were considering a larger drawdown than the current one--which would shrink the U.S. presence to a pre-surge level of about 130,000, he added: "Certainly there is a possibility of that." In fact, one Pentagon contractor who is working on the long-term U.S. plans for Iraq says that the administration is considering new configurations of forces that could reduce troop levels to well under 100,000, perhaps to as few as 60,000, by the time the next president takes office.

The upshot is that the next president, Democrat or Republican, is likely to be handed a fait accompli that could well render moot his or her own elaborate withdrawal plans, especially the ones being considered by the two leading Democratic contenders, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama, undeterred by the reported success of Bush's surge, is pushing ahead with his plans for a brigade-a-month withdrawals that would remove the U.S. military presence entirely. If current Defense Secretary Robert Gates can draw down to, say, 12 brigades by 2009, a senior Obama adviser told me Friday, "then we can get the rest out in eight to 10 months."

Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/id/91651

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I don't know if this has been posted yet or not, but... UGH!

shame on us.

Shame on nancy.

I'm just going to point out that Bush rendered previous treaties and agreements void when he took power and, BECAUSE HE WAS NOT IMPEACHED, we inherit those powers. Our Democratic president inherits those outrageous powers. Maybe voiding the Iraq agreements will be what we need to bring limitations to executive power. Because finally the Republicans will see our point.

Tell the Pentagon to stuff it.

is framing this as an irreversible treaty. And what stops a President from doing what he/she wants to do, as long as Congress approves? None of our policies and treaties are permanent.

then it can be overturned by the next president at his own say-so. Even if it was a treaty, all it would take is notifying the treaty signatories before taking action - just as Bush did when he abrogated the ABM treaty.

First thing that will be done on January 20 is the dismissal of David Petraeus.

parties, any new Prez would be able to simply say that's not their agreement, and they're changing it!

Let's make the Republicans really sorry they let that genie out of the bottle.

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as this takes place.

(This of course assumes there is a transfer of power in January 2009.)
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For two reasons:
1) The Dems are still and probably will still, be trying to compromise with these thugs. Where Rethugs do what they want and dare people to stop them, Dems try and be gentlemanly and get fucked over.
2) The second President Edwards/Obama/Hillary tries to excercise any of the extra-Constitutional powers that Bush has appropriated, the very second that happens, the entire media-corporate complex, all the Rethugs in Congress and quite a lot of the public will be up in arms and begin impeachment procedings instantly. Bush only gets away with it because he's inherited the same weird cult of personality as Reagan had.

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Declare victory in Iraq. Give order to leave. Pull troops out. Give Iraq to UN.
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Unless, of course, your goal is to make Obama look bad in the minds of people who only see the subject header on the headlines page?

I can only imagine... :grr:

I am so sick of this dictator bullshit. If Reid and Pelosi aren't all over this, we need to demand new "leadership". Good Lord... how much are we supposed to put up with?