Didn't Bush say last year that if Iraq wants the US out of its country, we would leave? --------------- Iraq insists on withdrawal timetable for US troops BAGHDAD - Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. It came a day after Iraq's prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the United States to have some type of timetable for withdrawal. President Bush has said he opposes a timetable. The White House said Monday it did not believe al-Maliki was proposing a rigid timeline for U.S. troop withdrawals. U.S. officials had no immediate comment Tuesday on al-Rubaie's statement. Al-Rubaie spoke to reporters after briefing Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf on the progress of the government's security efforts, and the talks. "Our stance in the negotiations underway with the American side will be strong ... We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn't have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq," al-Rubaie said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080708/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
Yeah but he did not mean it. Yesterday Bush said he was for a strong dollar. Dude makes sh** up; it is part of the Bush Legacy (tm).
Stupidly wrong thread title and premise. They want a timetable, not an immediate withdrawal. ...yet another smear attempt by the left... that's a shock
Good....let's bring em home and let Iraq handle it's own country. I am still pissed that this war put our economy in the crapper though. Thanks W......was it worth it? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ! DD
by the time it's all over, iran will be nuked and the fallout will kill all the iraqis anyway so...bring our troops home.
[rquoter] Maliki has warned Bush 1-Maliki wants a short term "memorandum of understanding" between the US and Iraq concerning the presence of US troops in the country. Translation: contrary to the pseudo Wilsonian fantasies of Bush/Cheney/the Jacobins and McCain, the Iraqis are still Iraqis and their government does not want foreign troops in their country... Period! Such a memorandum would not amount to a treaty of alliance or even a permanent relationship. All the spurious talk about American troops in Germany and Korea for fifty years founders here on the rock of Islamic and Arab difference. Yes. It's the culture thing again. Political science dogma about the sameness of peoples is still crap. Neither the idiot savants of the Jacobin group nor the ignorant buffoons who vote them into office ever comprehended any of this and they still do not. No predominately Muslim country is going to enter into a treaty of alliance with a non-Muslim state. That was true before 2003 and it remains true. The Muslims who read here will explain that to you all. 2- Maliki has now specifically warned Bush that Iraqi territory is not to be used for an attack against Iran by US forces. Translation: He made sure that it was understood that this prohibition includes facilities and air space. He did not mention Israeli forces or US assistance to Israeli forces, but it was hardly necessary to do so. The Dick McBush crowd could go ahead and do it anyway, but that would make it painfully clear that our prattling of Iraqi sovereignty was just a "blind" for neo-colonial adventure. There are a lot of good hearted and ignorant people in America who think that Iraq now belongs to the US in some way. Those folk may think that we ought to just "bull" our way through to final victory over the forces of darkness, fighting on to the "End of Evil" as Frum and Perle entitled their book. AIPAC may like that idea. WINEP certainly likes that idea in its secret heart of hearts, but the people who would pay the price for such a decision would be men and women in the field whose fortunes would be endangered by such foolishness. pl [/rquoter] source
Happily if we are forced to leave without permanent bases and occupation it will be a "defeat" for the neo-cons. It will however, salvage the best remaining alternative for the American people.
Hey, wait a minute, who are we going to listen to, these Iraqi government officials or the local commanders on the ground? Haven't you guys read T_J's thread? The surge is working and we're staying.
MCCAIN FLIP FLOPS...er...changes positions! Agrees with Obama and al-Maliki! McCain Spokesman: U.S. Should Leave If Iraq Wants Us Out
Op-Ed Contributor My Plan for Iraq By BARACK OBAMA Chicago THE call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States. The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown. In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness. But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge. The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009. Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government. But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war. As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal. In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees. Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq. As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq. In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender. It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war. Barack Obama, a United States senator from Illinois, is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
