Sigh… If it takes 5 months to get an agreement and you delay that process 6 months then the agreement is 6 months delayed plus whatever delays result from Iraqi elections. And since this replaces the UN mandate it also exposes the troops to civil law.
Since Obama is now on record as updating his 2008 departure date to July 2010 then it is necessary to have an agreement in place when the UN mandate ends. Which is before the next President takes office.
And you acknowledge that 9,000 more troops are coming home in February, even in the absence of a signed agreement with the Iraqis?
Emphasis added in wonder and amazement…
I have examined this sentence, and it is too many for me. I fold.
What you got there is one of them non-squatters, where the conclusion has no conceivable relationship with the premise. Since Obama’s dog is wet, then Maliki must shave his mustache.
Yes, I believe those are Bush’s plans.
It doesn’t alter the fact that Obama tried to delay SOFA negotiations, which are tied to troop withdrawal agreements. The longer it takes, the uglier it gets with Iraqi elections coming up in 2009. Troops are being withdrawn because the situation is improving, not arbitrarily because Obama pulled a number out of his ass. If negotiations break down because of excessive time and elections then things will go south.
Do you not understand the importance of the negotiations as it relates to the UN mandate?
Oh, I see. If the UN mandate runs out without an agreement, then GeeDub will order all US forces to surrender to blue-helmeted UN guys from Finland?
OK, so there’s no legal basis for their deployment in Iraq. There was no legal basis for them to be there in the first place. The UN doesn’t mean shit to a tree and even less to GeeDub.
If it weren’t “necessary” to have UN permission to invade Iraq, whatever makes you think their permission is “necessary” for them to stay?
So we are agreed: Bush can pull out troops at will, agreement or no.
Therefore, delaying an agreement has nothing to do with pulling out troops.
QED.
You’ve just said twice that Bush can – and is – pulling out troops in absence of an agreement. Therefore, while the agreement may set an “aspirational” date to complete the withdrawals, withdrawals can, and are, happening even though the agreement has already been delayed for several months already, irrespective of Obama’s visit. Nothing relating to troop withdrawals is being delayed by delaying the agreements, because there are no timetables in the agreement.
I understand very well what they are, and what they are not. In fact, I consider myself very well informed on the issue, even among people who work in my hometown. I’d be happy to share my expertise with you further, but you must first grasp the basic elements of the agreement, which it is clear you have not. One must first walk before they can run.
:dubious: No, it was not. The SOFA was tied to troops staying and Obama attempted to delay any Iraqi commitment to that, as he should have.
Exactly.
SOFA is tied to troops LEAVING. The idea that we would quickly pull up stakes quickly died in the Primaries (unless your name is Cindy). In fact, Obama is not even promoting a total reduction of force. Per his website he has troops there for an undeterminded amount of time to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda. By default that means Obama is now on board for a successful reduction of force. By his own NEW timeline it would take 16 months from the word go. The word go is tied to SOFA.
No, it isn’t.
Pretend for a moment that GeeDub’s most fervent prayer is answered. Pretend that a wave of change has roiled across Iraq, and now the Iraqi people simply adore The Leader and our heroes. Can’t get enough, eat us up with a spoon, throw flowers at our humvees, offer their daughters…
And beg us, beg us, on bended knee to send just a few thousand more troops, and they’ll give us all the oil we want at half the OPEC price…
There would still be a SOFA agreement. Their must be some stipulations about the status of soldiers relative to the sovereignty of Iraq. It is not in the slightest bit dependent on withdrawal.
Even if it were decided that there would be no change whatever in the troops, if we decided that they would all stay right there until they retired, died or mustered out… There would still be such an agreement.
What good can come of a postponement of such an agreement? Face saving.
If the terms demanded by Iraq to assuage their sovereignty are too heavy, there will be no such agreement and then withdrawal will be compelled along a much more difficult timeframe, because it would mean that not only do the Iraqis want us out, they don’t intend even to be nice about it.
And legally, they are entirely within their rights to be utter dicks about this.
The Iraqis have already made themselves pretty clear, time to go. They have even explicitly endorsed Obama’s timeline, they might expect Obama to explicitly endorse their demands in return. He would be wise to disabuse them of such a notion, he would be wise to advise them not to press the issue, as the issue will likely be resolved in the near future. To assure them that we can, in fact, read the handwriting on the wall, and there is no need to get tough.
So he’s not trying to postpone a withdrawal, he’s trying to postpone a crisis. He is saying not to rashly demand terms that GeeDub can’t accept. Be patient, we are going, we know we are going. Chill.
No, you’re flat wrong. The Iraqi’s are insisting on a withdrawal agreement in combination with SOFA. The SOFA agreement is necessary, absent the UN mandate.
It’s only necessary for troops that will be staying. Do we have SOFA agreements with nations where we have zero troops?
The Iraqi’s and this admin not agreeing on withdrawal terms has nothing to do with the** fact** that Bush could pull out the troops at any time without an agreement, does it?
I don’t think so, but I’m not 100% sure. When I travelled to Ireland last March I had to use a passport. I can travel from Italy, Spain or France or the Netherlands using only my military ID. Of course they are members of NATO. Idon’t think theres a SOFA in Ireland.
A delay of SOFA after the UN mandate expires poses a real problem with troop deployment. The assumption is that both parties want a withdrawal of troops in a fashion that doesn’t hurt Iraq. Stalling this process pushes the end date back.
That there’s another of them non-squatters. Or, to put it another way, so what?
If a convoy of US Army trucks are transporting a metric buttload of soldiers to Kuwait for embarkation, and the UN Mandate runs out and no SOFA is in place…they turn around and go back?
If, by some miracle, we had already removed 99% of our forces, you saying we’d have to send them back?
If US and Iraqi representatives are negotiating and the UN Mandate runs out, you know what they’ll do? They’ll keep negotiating. If troops are eating chow when it happens, they’ll finish their dinner.
We are leaving, and everybody knows it. And if Obama can’t make that a nearly dead certainty, then Lehman Brothers sure as fuck did.