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No I Won't Take Your Hand And Marry The State - Shadowproof

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attackermanCommunityAccording to the first paragraph in this New York Times story, Bush and Maliki are about to finish the garrisoning deal for U.S. troops in Iraq, a few short months before the U.N. Security Council mandate expires:The Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Friday appeared to be on the verge of an agreement that would spell out the conditions under which American troops would remain in Iraq and a timeline for their eventual departure.You see that also, right? I didn’t misread anything? But then here’s the eighth paragraph:Officials of both countries who have followed the negotiations in Washington and Baghdad seem to agree on one thing: It will probably be weeks, and possibly months, before an agreement can be finalized because the sensitivity of the issue among Iraqi lawmakers and Mr. Maliki’s sometimes shaky position as the chief executive of a country only recently freed from decades of tyranny and still torn by ethnic factions.&nbsp;I hate journalism-scold posts. They’re the lowest form of blogging, especially when written by other journalists. But what am I supposed to take away from this? "On the verge" means "months"?&nbsp;To get the taste of journo-scold off your palette, here’s Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell serving up something pungent:Q Right. But as we’re nearing the end of this agreement, is there anything in this that essentially is going to bind the hands of the next president —MR. MORRELL: No.Q — whoever that will be, in regarding broader policy issues?MR. MORRELL: No. I mean, I guess the — couple of the other fundamentals that we have talked about from the outset of this process is our belief that this agreement will in no way bind a future commander in chief to any set course in Iraq. There — as we have said from the outset, there is no security commitment in this agreement that would in any way require the next commander in chief to fulfill an obligation of that sort.Stuff and nonsense, good sir. Look, it’s a bilateral accord. The whole point is to create a legal arrangement for U.S. troops oh and oh yeah create some diplomatic facts about the duration of a U.S. commitment to Iraq. If all the Bush administration wanted to do was keep U.S. troops in Iraq on a stable legal footing for another year, it would have renewed the Security Council framework — or, at the very least, got the Maliki government to go along with a new Security Council resolution when bilateral talks deadlocked months ago. The trouble is that Bush fucked it all up. He thought he’d get an easy acquiescence out of Maliki to an indefinite occupation; but Maliki figured that Barack Obama is probably going to be president, lent Obama a crucial bit of support in July, and left Bush with a process that — of all humiliations — included "time horizons" for withdrawal. The best Bush can do now is to lock in that 2011 "aspirational" date of withdrawal and force Maliki to say that all that can change, even though that’s the one aspect of the accord that won’t bind Obama. But the whole point of this thing is to bind the next administration, and I thought we were treated like grownups under the Gates Pentagon so this is especially frustrating.Shadowproof is an independent publication funded by donations from readers like you. If you like our work, pay it forward by donating or subscribing today.DonateShadowproof is 100% funded by readers like youDonate NowThis is default text for notification barLearn moreSkip to content

attackermanCommunityAccording to the first paragraph in this New York Times story, Bush and Maliki are about to finish the garrisoning deal for U.S. troops in Iraq, a few short months before the U.N. Security Council mandate expires:The Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Friday appeared to be on the verge of an agreement that would spell out the conditions under which American troops would remain in Iraq and a timeline for their eventual departure.You see that also, right? I didn’t misread anything? But then here’s the eighth paragraph:Officials...

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Spencer Ackerman

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No I Won't Take Your Hand And Marry The State - Shadowproof

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