Five years on and, although the current economic meltdown is at the forefront of our concerns, Iraq is still lurking in the shadows. With the victory of Barack Obama seeming, while certainly not inevitable, pretty dang likely, we really do need to consider what responsibility he’ll be saddled with.

Put “Obama” in the same sentence as “Iraq” and you’ll be met with a wave of attacks on Obama’s “strength”. That’s what this seems to come down to with Iraq, how “strong” people are. The way it’s framed by the right, it’s not a question that we can or should win in Iraq, but rather whether someone’s balls are big enough to see it through to the end. As they see it, everyone knows we can and will eventually triumph, but Democrats lack the fortitude to keep up the good fight.

Not only is that wrong, but it’s illogical.

I’ve gone over the idea of “strength” before, that time in framing it by asking if it takes strength to send someone else to war as our Republican leaders have done (conclusion: it doesn’t). This time, though, let’s think about the “strength” it would take for Barack Obama to continue the war versus trying to end it.

Once again we have Nuri al-Maliki butting heads with the administration over when to pull our troops out of Iraq, but what’s really starting to emerge is a nice look into the mind of the Bush administration. After all, when you’ve got the Iraqis on one side and the Americans on the other, you’ve got to notice that the Administration’s line just ain’t the way it is. Long quote coming.

“It is not possible for any agreement to conclude unless it is on the basis of full sovereignty and the national interest, and that no foreign soldiers remain in Iraqi soil after a defined time ceiling,” Mr. Maliki said in a speech to Shiite tribal leaders in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

…

Mr. Maliki also said that there were other parts of the security pact on which the sides had yet to agree. Those points of dispute, he said, include Iraqi approval of American military operations and the conditions under which American soldiers will be granted immunity.

Iraq is prepared to grant immunity to American soldiers who are on bases or are conducting military operations, the Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in a telephone interview, but insists that they be subject to Iraqi law in any other circumstances.

…

Mr. Dabbagh said there was also disagreement over whether Iraqi detainees could remain in American custody. Iraq has been demanding that anyone detained by American forces be turned over to the Iraqi authorities within 24 hours.

What we’re seeing isn’t that the administration is against timelines, they legitimately seem loathe to hand over true control. Oh sure, they’re all right with Iraqi security forces running around taking the bullets, but they don’t want our troops out or our political hand removed. A timetable means no more control. They can’t say “we’re staying another month” or “I’m not happy with this, we’re not leaving” when a date has been set. It’s not security, it’s control. Otherwise, why any fuss over handing over detainees? Again, the Bush Administration wants the United States to hold all the cards.

And with Iraq aiming to make oil deals with Russia and China now, that’s probably a well-founded fear.

Once again, I just have no fucking response besides staring dumbfounded at the quote. On the 22nd, Dick Morris appeared on Hannity and Colmes where he said, I shit you not:

“Where he’s wrong is that we went into Iraq at the invitation of the government, not as an invasion.”

We were now invited into Iraq. Amazing. Of course, Colmes called him on it and he immediately backpedaled and stammered with “Well, we were invited by democracy and the government wants us there now and it totally wasn’t an invasion because invasions usually include planning.”

It’s completely ridiculous. We did invade Iraq, and we’ve been essentially occupying it for the last five years. Only now are there rumblings of us finally getting out by 2011, rumblings that have conveniently come only months after Obama was attacked for wanting to set timetables to have is out of Iraq around that time.

Also, Dick Morris’ head is shaped like a potato. It is one of the most potato-shaped heads I’ve ever seen on television. And while we’re on the subject, Terry MacAuliffe has a giant Ted Danson forehead, and Joe Scarborough looks like Chandler from Friends.

Just… wanted to point that out.

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that, somewhere in the US right now, John McCain is extremely, extremely unhappy.

“There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date which is the end of 2011 to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil,” Maliki said in a speech to tribal leaders in the Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

“Yes, there is major progress on the issue of the negotiations on the security deal,” Maliki said.

The Iraqi government has said it is proposing U.S. troops end patrols of Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year and U.S. combat troops leave Iraq by 2011.

It’s worth pointing out that this plan is, in a way, a faster withdrawal than even Obama’s proposal. He had planned taking one or two brigades out each month until withdrawal was complete, this time it’s full pullout in Iraqi cities by July, leaving them all in bases where they’ll wait to head home, Afghanistan, or maybe Iran. There was no way Obama was going be that far along six months into his term.

A lot of pundits are also taking this opportunity to say how this is somehow good for McCain, making the odd claim that this means the surge worked, Iraq has been made safe, so now thanks to Bush’s policy our troops can head out. This is absolute malarkey, hogwash, and bunk. Plain and simple.

The anti-timetable mantra was not based upon current conditions; it was an absolute statement: Giving timetables tells bad guys when we leave so they can all sit it out and wait until then. It was never qualified with “but they’re okay if conditions X, Y, and Z are met,” it was over and over again saying that timetables are verboten, terrorists will wait it out. End of story.

It might come as a surprise to many, including anyone who’s foolishly relied on me for their news, that there’s still a conflagration in the Gulf that has yet to be resolved. For all the talk of timetables for withdrawal and reconciliation in the government, stories such as this abound.

At least 25 people have been killed in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib district after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a feast held by a sheikh to celebrate his son’s release from a US detention centre.

About 30 people were also wounded in the attack on Sunday, which targeted members of the US-backed Awakening groups and police who were attending the dinner, an interior ministry official said.

This is why I argue that our men and women should not be there any more than Iraqi soldiers should be helping curb inner-city crime in the United States. While my heart goes out to the families of the victims, it’s difficult to accept that we should be the ones to enforce the rule of law when we’re not even involved in the battle.

It’s true that we knocked out Saddam and left the doors open, but eventually we’re going to have to come to grips with the fact that these people need to take some responsibility for this. Or maybe Biden’s right and after 90 years of trying to keep a country together that was arbitrarily drawn around oil fields rather than following sectarian borders, we need to rethink the concept of a “solution” entirely.

I don’t know, someone tell me. How do you enforce peace when the people are doing this to each other?

One has to wonder if things like this will ever cause Obama to run ads saying “even the Bush administration is drifting toward my policies.” After years, and years, of arguing against a timetable for withdrawal, the White House is about to agree to just that.

The top Iraqi negotiator told AFP in Baghdad that the tentative accord calls for all US combat troops to be out of Iraqi cities by next June and US forces gone from the war-torn country by the end of 2011.

…

In a late-July survey by CNN, 62 percent said they favored setting a timetable for withdrawal, while 37 percent opposed doing so. The poll had an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points.

Bush had also come under pressure because of public statements by Iraq’s leaders that they favored setting a timetable for withdrawal in the agreement, which both sides said was needed because the occupation’s UN mandate expires in late 2008.

A printing of the AP report in my local paper (which I cannot seem to find the electronic copy of), points out that “the administration has inched toward the Iraqi view” on a short-term withdrawal, once again highlighting the massive hypocrisy espoused by the Republicans who claim that this is all for the Iraqis.

The more important thing, though, is that this is a damn timetable. After all this time, they’re talking about having the troops out by 2011, a withdrawal plan that’s up to three years, but the important part is that the troops would be out of “major combat cities” by next June, phasing the rest out until December of ‘11.

My theory holds true: eventually, everyone realizes that the liberals were right.

Muqtada al-Sadr’s been considered amongst the leading problems in stabilizing Iraq ever since the list of “biggest terrorist in Iraq” got mostly knocked down and nothing really improved. After a few ceasefires that sort of worked, he’s moved onto a new strategy. Launching an unarmed wing of his organization, he’s willing to declare total ceasefire, but under one condition.

In a statement read at Friday prayers, he said only a “resistance” group was to remain armed, AP reported.

A spokesman told Western media Mr Sadr’s militias would disarm if the US set and followed a timetable for withdrawing its troops from Iraq

That’s right, the timetable that just recently got proposed, the 21-month thing.

Here’s an issue now, and why I really don’t think Sadr thought this one through. If there’s one defining trait of the Bush Clan and the “War on Terror” brigade, it’s that any time an extremist makes a demand, even if it’s something we already wanted to do, now we’re going to be thinking it over. It’s the equivalent of having the KKK come up behind you and going “yeah, I agree!”

So when Sadr starts making demands with a bit of a backdrop of “we won’t put down our guns unless you have a timetable”, now you can bet United States brass is going to bristle, not wanting to concede to the demands of terrorists.

I should note that I don’t believe this to be the case. As a spokesman for Sadr said, “[this] should not be considered an end to the Mehdi army” but was “a halfway step to dissolving the Mehdi Army.” So maybe they aren’t using the army as a threat, but rather are holding their guns and saying that if we’re serious about getting out of Dodge, then they’ll do their part as well.

Hard to say, but this will definitely toss an interesting wrinkle into the situation.

Um, holy shit.

Iraq and the U.S. are near an agreement on all American combat troops leaving Iraq by October 2010, with the last soldiers out three years after that, two Iraqi officials told The Associated Press on Thursday. U.S. officials, however, insisted no dates had been agreed.

The proposed agreement calls for Americans to hand over parts of Baghdad’s Green Zone — where the U.S. Embassy is located — to the Iraqis by the end of 2008. It would also remove U.S. forces from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, according to the two senior officials, both close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and familiar with the negotiations.

The officials, who spoke separately on condition of anonymity because the talks are ongoing, said all U.S. combat troops would leave Iraq by October 2010, with the remaining support personnel gone “around 2013.” The schedule could be amended if both sides agree — a face-saving escape clause that would extend the presence of U.S. forces if security conditions warrant it.

Not only does this mark, as the AP points out, a massive reversal in American policy (at least Republican policy), but it’s going to really make the election interesting.

The plan calls for withdrawal to basically start at the beginning of 2009, when control of “parts” of the Green Zone are handed over, and troops are out by October of 2010. That would be 21 months after the next president takes office, a scant five months longer than Obama’s proposed, and Maliki’s endorsed, 16 month withdrawal plan.

One Iraqi official said persuading the Americans to accept a timetable was a “key achievement” of the talks and that the government would seek parliamentary ratification as soon as the deal is signed.

That’s right, the Iraqis think timetables are important. Not just in the abstract, the “as soon as we think the situation warrants it” bullshit Bush and McCain have said, but actually writing it down and saying THIS is when you’ll give us control, THIS is when troops are gone, and THIS is when everyone else is totally gone.

No hundred years, no long-term occupation a la South Korea. This is probably why McCain never talks about Iraq in his ads.

No matter what conservative pundits say, liberals don’t want Iraq to dissolve. Surprise as it may be to many, watching the lives of millions destroyed just so we can say “toldja so” is not a great payoff. So believe me when I say that I’m just as concerned about Iraq’s inability to resolve a deadlock delaying provincial elections. The sooner they get their shit together, the sooner our troops come home (hopefully).

The decision to go into summer recess came after lawmakers failed to break a deadlock over Kurdish opposition to a power-sharing formula for the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk despite days of intense negotiations and heavy pressure from U.S. and U.N. officials.

Officials involved in preparations for the elections — which the U.S. believes are necessary for national reconciliation — have said such a delay would likely push voting to next year.

The phrase “turn a corner” gets bantered around a lot in reference to Iraq. When this or that terrorist was killed, they turned a corner. Purple fingers? Another corner. The list goes on. But mark my words, when we see the United States stepping in to tell the Iraqis to resolve their differences as though we were a parent dealing with fighting siblings, that’s a bad corner we will have turned. What we’ll be watching is the US thumbing their noses at the people of Iraq and saying “okay you guys suck at this, let the adults handle it”.

It’s never easy to bet that something won’t happen, because it’s like proving a negative. As long as it hasn’t happened yet, people can still claim it will someday. Right now the question is, “Will the Iraqis form a stable, democratic government with all sects getting fair representation?” It may very well happen, but it’s not the sunniest outlook, and if the US has to “make” it happen, then we’re in trouble.

So it now becomes how long the US should sit around while the Iraqis duke it out. No matter what McCain says, we can’t solve everything with troops and the violence is largely a symptom (which is why American casualties are less common than Iraqi). We need to determine how much of our resources are worth spending on a problem that, frankly, is not ours. And speaking of resources, this is just beautiful:

Finance Minister Bayan Jabr has said passage of the supplemental budget would raise the overall budget to some $70 billion this year and is needed for food rations, fuel for power plants and raises for civil servants.

Approval of the budget measure came as U.S. lawmakers complained that the Iraqis were not paying enough for their own reconstruction.

Sorry guys, it just doesn’t work that way. When you barge your way into a country and forcibly destroy its government, level half of the landscape, and annihilate most of the infrastructure, you don’t get to bitch that the locals aren’t doing their fair share of fixing it. It doesn’t matter that our aim was (supposedly) for their benefit. If anything that makes it worse.

It’s almost ironic that we’re spreading the Democracy, but never actually asked the Iraqis if they wanted us to do what we did, or if they want us to do business the way we’re doing it. One hell of a “do as we say, not as we do” situation.

Easily amongst the more infuriating problems with the “media bias” toward Obama is the fact that we are once again seeing the wrong debate getting framed. We’ve seen it before, but nothing really exemplifies it better than this really, really shitty interview Katie Couric had with Obama.

You can read it for yourself, the point is that she asked him some variant of “but wasn’t it a mistake to oppose the surge?” or “wasn’t it good that the surge happened?”

This has become the latest talking point: Obama opposed the surge and he was wrong because the surge led to success. McCain’s been using it as a talking point a lot lately, here in PA there are ads focused almost entirely on that point that get run all the time. Any time McCain gets on the stump to contrast his own policies with Obama’s, the surge invariably comes up.

The problem is that the people spouting this one forget that Obama’s actual Iraq policy was “don’t go into Iraq, it’ll just screw up Afghanistan.” That part’s pretty hard to deny. Had we kept our troops in Afghanistan, not blown off the bin Laden hunt, we’d be enjoying a damn safe America and probably a way better economy.

And the right knows it. They know that they can’t argue that launching the war has left us with one hell of a military headache and precious few resources to clean it up. So they frame the debate to ignore all of that, instead acting as though it hadn’t happened, we all came in circa 2006 and that’s when all discussion on the issue started.

Oh, and on the topic, I found this quote by McCain’s on what the Surge really did rather adorable:

“Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards. It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan,” McCain continued to the crowds’ applause. “I know how to win wars. And if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory. I know how to do that.”

Oh I see. When we started the war in Afghanistan, we had no idea what we were doing. But rather than altering strategies, we had to use Iraq like a little testing ground for what would eventually get rolled out over there. PERFECTLY logical. Heck, if we had stayed in Iraq, we might never have figured out that adding troops would help!