Obama Writes A Winner In The NYT’s Today

Well, the dims have worked hard to brainwash the American public and succeeded to a point. If Bush had been the type of politician who raised his finger into the air to see which way the wind was blowing they might have succeeded but he was not. He stood firm against the worst onslaught of abuse ever sent a president’s way from both his party and the dims. He succeeded in spite of it. When history compares him to Clinton, thre will be no question of who is great and who is not. History will call Clinton narcissistic and self-centered and they will call Bush a man who stood firm for his principles. Bush will be one of the great presidents

Oh yeah, what a hawk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZVqGuwRqnw

Hey Curt, note to whom he spoke… and when:

Snip:

One way to relieve this stress is to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps. Obama’s plans for a 65,000-person increase in the Army and a 27,000-person increase in the Marine Corps match plans already underway. He said he is not sure about personnel levels for the Navy and Air Force, but “I don’t anticipate a reduction” for those two services.add that he wanted to increase the military after his cost concerns.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/military_obama_070708/

Gee, I remember when he and Romney had a ‘who will add the most troops’ contest last year… after that sex-ed in kindergarten thingie.

Flashback:

re: Obama’s 2007 speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702027.html

Obama got it right. Mostly.

To begin with let’s declare SOFA kaput for Bush Administration wrangling. Let’s therefore say, since it’s now hanging by a thread, Iraqis won and Bush (and McCain, too) lost. Why do I say this? Quite simply because a long-term occupation of Iraq was the goal for the Administration, and it failed. That’s the good news; it’s needs to be proclaimed.

Those that say otherwise, that long-term intentions were not in their game plan, weren’t playing enough attention. At the end of 2008, the United Nation’s security mandate authorizing American combat operations will expire. To replace the mandate Bush and Maliki issued a “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship” in November of 2007. Based on this Declaration, the administration and the Iraqi government were working to issue a SOFA Agreement by the end of July. The Declaration is broader than the SOFA would have been. Therefore we already know the general goal of the Administration’s efforts were to secure an arrangement where the US would “stabilize” Iraq on the long term models of South Korea and Germany US militarization.

Therefore, like all a long-day’s light it must end, it’s required to come to a twilight, it’s the natural designs of things that they cannot endure more than what their intended purpose calls for. For there to have been an arranged long-term occupation of Iraq by Bush and Maliki, Iraq would have had to have been a US military based proxy for the United States. Yet such a conceptual configuration only ends in contradiction if the legitimated terms for such a longterm occupation result in a denial of sovereignty. And they do.

The BBC piece Curt quotes from illustrates the tremendous pressures Maliki was under and how his balancing act is a continuous inartful stumble as he tries to walk back his public statements in his press releases that advocate an impatience with foreign troops on his soil:

I say forget worrying about whether or not Maliki’s using the word ‘withdrawal’ in the speech =it’s simply irrelevant= …just listen to what the gist of what he said: “The goal is to end the presence [of foreign troops].” That’s been his montra ever since SOFA leaks fell on Iraqi ears and Sistani was awoken.

So, now Maliki wants out of the Declaration of Principles, he wants out of SOFA; if he’s not out of them, isn’t pushing for a troop goal exit, he’s out of office.

The pact that the US and Iraq will now probably have will probably only make it to fall or winter of ’09, no more. By that time the new president will have been hammering away at a new SOFA, new terms, dates, hopes, goals and so on. And most certainly, the public pressure isn’t going to let up. So, that it– who gives a sh*t now on about a time-table. (Anyway, if Sistani says ‘go!’, we go– He’s had a significant impact on the development of this security scenario, yet never a word about him on right wing blogs. It’s as if denial were a conservative virus here.)

Again, Maliki, out of public pressure and the gravity of the elections, has cut the Bush administration’s own demands on Iraq beyond the bone, and then thrown the bone to the next president. That’s what has happened. What’s now being forged is on a ‘paper napkin’, it’s formality is TEMPORARY–less than a year’s time.

Of course, Maliki and Bush are hoping that this temporary protocol will now be able to circumvent full parliamentary review and a two-thirds vote Maliki has promised for a SOFA. Will it? If so, this way at least something legally binding gets through. If it gets that far, then the rest is up to GOP and McCain– if they can will the election.

(After all is said and done, when one thinks about it, the enduring testament of the Bush administration’s legacy ends here on Iraq: by almost any means necessary it pushed the U.S. towards a long-term occupation of a foreign country, while actively circumventing the democratic procedures and sentiment of both countries that oppose it, yet it failed.

So, will the 2009 pact accent withdrawals, be condition based, as well as ‘horizon time-lined’, be approved by Parliament, will it be authoritative, structured, construed…? Who knows at this point. Certainly there will be attempts for a language that will try to force Iraq to maintain a heavy troop base presence. But can it be done without the public and parliament finding out …and yet another public backlast over the occupation– can Maliki even afford it? You have to wonder.

Therefore, here Bush lost. It’s now in the hands of the next president.

BTW– O’Hanlon, reportedly ‘livid’ over Obama’s NYT’s piece, wonders why Obama wrote the piece just before going to Iraq: the above explains why. O’Hanlon knows it, too. He’s just too angry, along with many others, to see the facts as they are yet.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/republican-national-committee-they-said/story.aspx?guid=%7B7BC2273B-B9CD-4B46-BBF7-6287310A5131%7D&dist=hppr

For Iraq wonks only: A resource for permanent basing in Iraq:
http://www.comw.org/warreport/iraqarchivepermbase.html

A concise argument for a US long-term presence in Iraq:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/occupation/report/bases.htm

A quicky political narrative on the ‘problem’ in The Declaration of Principles…

(NPR) President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a joint letter in November. On the surface, the “Declaration of Principles” appears as a mutual “expression of friendship,” as it has been characterized by administration officials.

But a closer look reveals a blueprint for how the two administrations plan to set the foundation for the future of America’s involvement in Iraq.

When administration officials describe that vision, the language they use is vague. The president recently spoke of an “enduring relationship.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talks about “a relationship with Iraq for the long term.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlined “a mutually agreed arrangement whereby we have a long and enduring presence.”

Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) says such language is vague, and he has launched a series of congressional hearings to find out what it means.

He’s asked administration officials to testify but, so far, they’ve all either ignored him or declined. Delahunt says they have declined because he and other lawmakers want to get a sense of secret negotiations under way between Pentagon and State Department officials and their Iraqi counterparts on the future relationship between Washington and Baghdad.

The “Declaration of Principles” includes language that seems run-of-the-mill. The United States will help get Iraq into the World Trade Organization. The two countries will engage in scientific and cultural exchanges.

‘Internal and External Threats’

But it also includes a provision that promises to maintain the stability of Iraq’s government from “internal and external threats.” This sentence is raising alarms for some U.S. lawmakers.

Any such agreement would be considered a treaty by many legal experts. And under the U.S. Constitution, treaties have to be ratified by Congress.

“The declaration of principles would appear to commit the United States to keeping the elected Iraqi government in power against internal threats,” says Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service. “I leave it to the lawyers to determine whether that’s the definition of a treaty or not but it certainly seems to be — is going to be — a hefty U.S. commitment to Iraq for a long time.”

Such a hefty commitment would be unprecedented in the history of American foreign policy.
…

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18357565

So… Democrats said, “Are you kiddin’??”

…
(NYT) Democratic critics have complained that the initial announcement about the administration’s intention to negotiate an agreement, made Nov. 26, included an American pledge to support Iraq “in defending its democratic system against internal and external threats.”

Representative Bill Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts, said that what the administration was negotiating amounted to a treaty and should be subjected to Congressional oversight and ultimately ratification.

“Where have we ever had an agreement to defend a foreign country from external attack and internal attack that was not a treaty?” he said Wednesday at a hearing of a foreign affairs subcommittee held to review the matter. “This could very well implicate our military forces in a full-blown civil war in Iraq. If a commitment of this magnitude does not rise to the level of a treaty, then it is difficult to imagine what could.”

Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, who raised concerns in a letter to the White House in December, said the negotiations were an unprecedented step toward making an agreement on status of forces without the overarching security guarantees like those provided in the NATO treaty. He added that the Democratic majority would seek to block any agreements with the Iraqis, unless the administration was clear about its ultimate intentions in Iraq.

“There’s no exit strategy, because the administration doesn’t have one,” Senator Webb said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “By entering this agreement, they avoid a debate and they validate their unspoken strategy.”

Over recent days, administration officials acknowledged that the language of the Nov. 26 announcement went too far. The officials said that they were limiting the scope of the pending negotiations to issues that could be resolved this year, before the Security Council resolution expired.
…

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/world/middleeast/25military.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&fta=y&pagewanted=print

Legalisms, Implications… and ‘hidden agendas’…

(Washington Independent) The negotiation [for a SOFA], set to conclude this summer, will establish the basis for a long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq. According to the Bush administration, the Iraqi government requested a bilateral agreement to replace the expiring U.N. mandate for the occupation, which offended Iraqi sovereignty. Asked if there was any irony in preparing a plan to keep thousands of foreign soldiers in Iraq in the name of Iraqi sovereignty, a National Security Council official, who requested anonymity, replied, “Sure, but we plan to negotiate that aspect” of the agreement.

(Matt Mahurin) Critics in the U.S. and in the Middle East are talking about the impending accords as the fulfillment of a hidden agenda. On Al Jazeera’s “Inside Iraq” program, a recent report on the negotiations began: “This firm handshake between President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki may seal what had been predicted all along: that the U.S. has no intention of withdrawing from Iraq.” Indeed, for years, the U.S. military in Iraq has quietly constructed massive bases that can garrison tens of thousands of troops indefinitely.

Another line of criticism concerns both the timing and the unilateralism of the negotiations. The Bush administration has less than a year in office, yet it is now negotiating a deal that will commit the U.S. to an open-ended continuation of its most momentous, and controversial, foreign-policy decision. At the very least, the accord will prove a thorny issue for any successor Democratic administration that wins election on a promise to end the war.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the Democratic presidential candidate, wrote a letter to the president about this in January. The move “suggests the United States will indeed construct permanent bases in Iraq, feeding the perception that we intend to remain an occupying force for years to come,” Obama wrote. “It would tie the hands of the next commander-in-chief, decreasing his or her flexibility to confront a dynamic threat environment that has shown Al Qaeda more dangerous than at any time since September 11, 2001.”

Obama further requested that the president “submit any agreement reached in [U.S.-Iraqi] negotiations to the Senate for its advice and consent.” That’s precisely what the administration resists.

Ever since it announced in November that it would seek a long-term security agreement with Iraq, the Bush administration has refused to call the agreement a “treaty,” since that would require Senate ratification — something a Democratic-controlled Senate is sure to reject. A key State Dept. official, David M. Satterfield, recently testified that the agreement “will not include a binding commitment to defend Iraq or any other security commitments that would warrant Senate advice and consent.” Critics describe that determination as both legalistic and cynical.

In fact, some administration officials agree with Obama, somewhat, about the purpose of the security agreement. In an off-the-record conversation, one official suggested that if the recalcitrant Iraqi government is to make any progress on sectarian reconciliation — as Democrats say they want to see — Iraqi politicians must know that the U.S. will stay in Iraq to support them. While the point is debatable, its implicit premise is that the agreement must indeed tie the hands of the next administration.
…

http://washingtonindependent.com/view/ensuring-permanence

Evidence for long-term basing…

The United States has been building large, expensive and long-lasting military bases in Iraq as well as an enormous new embassy complex in Baghdad. These construction projects are very controversial. Iraqis overwhelmingly oppose the bases, as numerous opinion polls have shown, and the US Congress has also rejected the spending of funds on “permanent” bases in Iraq. The bases and the embassy are widely seen as symbols that the US plans to wield exceptional military and political influence in Iraq — and in the region — for many years to come.
…
As of late 2006, there remained 55 US bases in Iraq,[3] among which commanders have chosen a small number for long-term or “enduring” development. The base-building process is now far along, with construction of major concrete runways, communications, utilities, and extensive amenities for troops.

These special bases are located in different regions of the country, permitting military control over the entire area of Iraq. The bases are centered around major military airfields, rebuilt from the Saddam era, which allow the resident ground forces to protect US air strike capabilities. The airfields give the bases some degree of independence from ground (and easily attacked) logistical support and they enable close coordination between ground forces and tactical air operations.

Though Pentagon budgets have made it impossible to determine precisely the sums devoted to Iraq base construction, considerably more than a billion dollars has been spent on these special bases.[4] In the 2006 supplemental budget, $348 million was allocated for further construction.[5]
…
Long-term US bases in Iraq are said to offer important advantages, according to US political and military strategists. On April 19, 2003, soon after US troops took control of Baghdad, reporters Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt wrote a front-page article for the New York Times pointing to Pentagon plans to “maintain” four bases in Iraq for the long haul.[30] Rather than speak of “permanent bases,” the military preferred then to speak of “permanent access” to Iraq. [31] At about the same time, senior administration officials told the New York Times that the US was planning “a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the region.” [32]

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was quick to deny these reports, telling the press the same month that talk of a permanent US military presence in Iraq is “inaccurate and unfortunate.” [33] Both President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld continued such denials, even while the construction of these vast facilities was already well under way. On February 17, 2005, Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee: “I can assure you that we have no intention at the present time of putting permanent bases in Iraq.” [34] But members of Congress were beginning to wonder, since the Pentagon was asking them to authorize hundreds of millions in annual budgets to finance the base construction.

Military commanders in the field have been relatively frank in talking about the bases and their eventual use over the long term. Army Brigadier General Robert Pollman told a reporter in 2005: “Is this a swap for the Saudi bases? I don’t know… When we talk about enduring bases here, we’re talking about the present operation … But this makes sense. It makes a lot of logical sense.” [35] General John Abizaid, commanding US General in Iraq, commented to the press on March 14, 2006 that the US may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster pro-US “moderates” and to “protect the flow of oil in the region.” [36]

Larry Diamond, a Fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University and former adviser to Paul Bremer in Baghdad noted that the Bush administration would not declare that it is not seeking permanent bases in Iraq “because we are building permanent military bases in Iraq.” James Glanz of the New York Times notes that in the absence of a fully-functional Iraqi air force, the United States will be “responsible for air defenses” in Iraq “for some time to come.” And GlobalSecurity comments that the giant new communications tower at al-Balad base is “another sign of permanency.” [37]

A military funding bill drawn up in the Pentagon and passed by Congress in May 2005 said directly that some base construction projects in unnamed countries would be “permanent.” It said the funding would cover “in some very limited cases, permanent facilities” that would “include barracks, administrative space, vehicle maintenance facilities, aviation facilities, mobilization-demobilization barracks, and community support facilities,” in short, just about everything that is going into the major bases now being constructed in Iraq. [38]
…
Conclusion

In spite of growing opposition within the US Congress and within the Iraqi government, the Bush administration is pushing rapidly ahead with its construction programs for the long-term bases and for the massive embassy as well. Those who conceived these projects clearly had little sensitivity as to how Iraqis might react and little awareness of the powerful imagery and symbolism the US was creating. Such mammoth construction projects, costing billions of dollars, strongly suggest that their authors see Iraq as a US client state and as a base for US military operations in the Middle East region. As US congressman Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, observed: “This [embassy] structure in Baghdad sends a message, like the military bases being built, that we expect to be in Iraq and running Iraq for a long time to come.” [67]

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/occupation/report/bases.htm

If it leaks, it sinks…

…
(Independent) America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military “surge” began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. “It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty,” said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: “This is just a tactical subterfuge.” Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its “war on terror” in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.
…

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-secret-plan-to-keep-iraq-under-us-control-840512.html

Now McCain and Cheney have not kept this interest in maintaining a long-term presence in Iraq a secret. They simply keep saying AQ is perpetually ‘on the run’ or ‘victory’ is around the next corner, which it never is:

(ABC) Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain vowed in meetings with Iraq’s prime minister Monday that the U.S. would maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq until al-Qaida is defeated there.

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0308/504352.html

Of course, no one ever defines ‘defeated,’ ‘victory’ or what other adjective used in the war. As long as the specter of AQ is can promote a public reaction, it’s good political feed and holds an unquestioning public by the back of the neck.

In the end the fat lady will sing. She’s testing her pipes right now.