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I wrote earlier (at Newshoggers) that there was still an Iraq debate to be had - namely whether the US' word, as set down in the SOFA agreement with Iraq, is worth the paper it's printed on. There's a considerable body of opinion in military and neo-whatever circles that says it isn't.

Bob Fertik emails to note that, five minutes before Obama announced his withdrawal timetable, NBC was quoting commanders as saying it wasn't binding on them. Just before Obama's said "I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011," NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski told David Gregory that military commanders are making plans as if the SOFA and the orders of the Commander in Chief were irrelevant.

Miklaszewski: Secretary Gates, as early as 18 months to 2 years ago, was saying "look, everyone understands that we're going to have to start withdrawing from Iraq." But at the same time, Gates adds this caveat that he believes significant numbers of troops will remain in Iraq for years to come.

And in fact military commanders, despite this Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government that all US forces would be out by the end of 2011, are already making plans for a significant number of American troops to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline, assuming that Status of Forces Agreement agreement would be renegotiated.

And one senior military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 to 20 years, David.

Gregory: 15 to 20 years, I think that takes a moment to really sink in. With a mission that is primarily what over that kind of time horizon, Mik?

Miklaszewski: Again it would evolve from a day-to-day combat mission, to more of an oversight mission. We mustn't forget the US is providing nearly 100% of all combat air support over Iraq, and the Iraqi military is not going to be ready to assume that mission within the next 18 months to 2 years, it's going to be impossible.

And there are some discussions, I know Richard Engel mentioned the area of Kirkuk up in the north recently, there are some discussions among Iraqis and I know some military commanders to establish what could end up as a permanent air base, US air base, in Kirkuk.

Gregory: Striking.

Which just goes to show that we should be very leary of leaving withdrawal up to those who have a natural inclination not to withdraw. Generations of "surprise" babies will tell you how well that works out. Bob Gates may say that senior commanders are all behind Obama's plan, but there's a lot of reporting says they aren't.

These people are treading a dangerous course, as Marc Lynch explains. He writes that "Iraqis will be watching carefully to see whether the United States honors its commitments" in the months leading up to an Iraqi referendum on the SOFA agreement on July 31st and that if they don't see the right answer then the referendum will be a resounding "no" - at which point the US will have only 12 months to get everyone out of Iraq or occupy the country illegally again.

The argument for a significant, early withdrawal of U.S. combat forces remains overwhelming. Indeed, a failure to deliver on the promise of early U.S. withdrawals is the most likely thing to cause a rapid deterioration in conditions in Iraq....The new administration will get only one chance to demonstrate the credibility of its commitments, and indefinitely leaving troops at current levels will only postpone rather than solve the problems.

The US must make a substantial down payment on withdrawal now, or suffer later. Not just in Iraq, although the problems there would be bad enough, but on the world stage.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

The Pentagon is still focussed on 24-36 months (or more) despite what Obama or Maliki might say.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri "Napoleon" al-Maliki says he expects the US to withdraw from Iraq faster than promised, and he's just fine with that.

President Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to remove all combat troops within 16 months and has asked the Pentagon to plan for "a responsible military drawdown from Iraq."

With planning under way, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a political rally south of Baghdad that he believes the end of the U.S. mission "will be brought forward" and that Iraq must bolster its own forces to meet the challenge after the Americans leave.

The Shiite-led government pushed for a faster U.S. pullout during last year's negotiations on the security agreement, overcoming longtime Bush administration opposition to a fixed withdrawal schedule.

Al-Maliki has been campaigning actively on behalf of his allies for next weekend's provincial elections, promoting his image as the leader who restored stability and ended what many Iraqis see as a U.S. military occupation.

Of course, Maliki expects to be left in charge of the Iraqi security forces if he can get US forces out before his rivals manage to oust him. And at that point, those rivals have no chance of ousting him if he doesn't want to go. He's already shown willing to use the security forces to bolster his own position.

But that's hardly our business. It's always been stated American policy that the US would leave when the Iraqi leadership asked them to - something that "SOFA stretchers" like Odierno and Crocker could all do with a Presidential reminder on.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

The Deciderer, according to the Three Amigos

There's a lot of fluff about bi-partisan agreement, withdrawing to leave a democratic Iraq and the "successes" of the last two years in an op-ed by John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham in the Washington Post today. But there's only one important bit.

Gen. Odierno was the operational architect of the surge in 2007, when he served as deputy to Gen. Petraeus, as well as of the tribal engagement strategy that persuaded Sunnis to abandon the insurgency and join our side. Gen. Odierno -- as the current commander on the ground -- is the person whose judgment should matter most in determining how fast and how deep a drawdown can be ordered responsibly.

This is the same General Odierno who recently forgot his place in the chain of command, saying that he had no intention of sticking to the U.S. agreement with Iraq which says all U.S. troops must be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by the summer. He also hinted that the 2011 final withdrawal date might be ignorable, saying "Three years is a very long time."

The Maliki government was quick to respond that it expected the letter of the status of forces agreement to be adhered to. But Bush administration loyalist Odierno, by indicating that the U.S. would continue to try to bend treaties and deals all out of shape instead of sticking to its word, has badly damaged Obama's political capital abroad before the President Elect has even taken office. It's off a piece with other military statements, as Gareth Porter reported on Thursday:

Gen. David Petraeus, now commander of CENTCOM, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who opposed Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan during the election campaign, have drawn up their own alternative withdrawal plan rejecting that timeline, as the New York Times reported Thursday. That plan was communicated to Obama in general terms by Secretary of Defence Robert M.Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen when he met with his national security team in Chicago on Dec. 15, according to the Times.

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U.S. Embassy Swimming Pool, Baghdad

So much for sticking to the agreement.

Despite a summer deadline to pull American combat troops from urban areas, thousands will stay in cities to support and train Iraqis, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Saturday.

Even with the mandate in the recently approved U.S.-Iraq security agreement, there have been suggestions some troops would not leave urban areas. But Gen. Raymond Odierno was the first military leader to acknowledge some forces would remain at local security stations, as training and mentoring teams.

"We believe we should still be inside those after the summer," he said the sprawling U.S. base in Balad, north of Baghdad before welcoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates on a brief visit.

According to the NYT, he also questioned the final date for 2011.

Mr. Gates met with General Odierno for an hour later in the day and then was scheduled to return to Washington. Before the meeting, Mr. Gates held a question-and-answer session with American soldiers and reiterated the Bush administration’s pledge to the Iraqi government of a complete troop withdrawal by the end of 2011.

But General Odierno said Saturday, as Pentagon officials have said previously, that the agreement might be renegotiated with the Iraqi government.

“Three years is a very long time,” General Odierno told reporters.

And Gates didn't fire him on the spot, so it will be assumed he (and Bush, and Obama) are just fine with all this. I wonder what the various Iraqi factions will say? Viceroy Odierno just handed Maliki (and Obama) a big problem in the form of an "I am a US puppet" button and a target on his back. If Noor al-Napoleon doesn't say "no, the deal must be stuck to", and loudly, then the others will eat him alive.

On a wider stage, if the Bush administration doesn't rap Odierno hard then Obama will have blown some of his capital in foreign places before his administration can even begin because Odierno, a Bush appointee, has indicated that the U.S. will continue to try to bend treaties and deals all out of shape instead of sticking to its word. Yet another Bush administration spoiler.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

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On Fox News Sunday Nov. 30, 2008. Chris Wallace talks to Lindsey Graham and Clair McCaskill about the pick of Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of Defense. First up is Lindsey Graham and after expressing his approval of the pick of Gates and the others on Obama's future National Security team and managing to put in one more plug for how well the surge supposedly has worked in Iraq, Graham plays concern troll for Obama and says he hopes he listens to Gen. Petraeus. I'm sorry but I thought Gen. Petraeus said that he would follow the orders of the new President and not the other way around. But then Petraeus is one of those very "serious" people that the GOP has practically anointed to sainthood, so why should we expect anything different from Graham?

Wallace moves on to Clair McCaskill and wants to know why even though McCaskill was critical of Gates that he is now the right man to pull our forces out of Iraq. McCaskill reminds Wallace that an important part of the SOFA agreement is that it embraces the kind of time table that Barack Obama made a foundation of his campaign. She tells Wallace that at least Gates is no ideologue and that Obama wants the best and the brightest for his Cabinet and not just those that supported him.

Then Wallace throws out this doozie:

Sen. McCaskill, are you concerned about the fact and yes the Status of Forces Agreement says that all the troops have to be out by 2011, but Mr. Obama's time table is much quicker than that, it's the middle of 2010 and he wants a firm deadline for pulling them out. Bob Gates has talked about doing it based on conditions. Are you satisfied that Secretary Gates will follow Barack Obama's orders?

How utterly ridiculous. Can anyone imagine the Villagers asking this of a Republican President-elect? Of John McCain had he won? Of Bush? After McCaskill responds that of course Gates will follow orders Wallace asks Graham the same question and they blather on about whether Obama will listen to Gates or Petraeus and Wallace asks if the pick of Gates means that Obama might modify his time line.

Chris Wallace, no one knows what Obama is going to do once he takes office but the one thing we know he won't be doing is taking orders from Bob Gates or David Petraeus, or skipping out like our current Commander in Chief and letting his Vice-President run a shadow Presidency while he clears brush at the ranch.

Here's a historic picture from AFP, via the NY Times - The Iraqi cabinet has approved the current wording of the so-called Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Iraq, which will replace the UN mandate at the end of the year, with only one dissenting voice.

Spencer Ackerman writes:

The Bush administration intended the SOFA process to entrench the occupation. Instead it gave the Iraqi government the means to end it. And that's the best-possible way for the war to end: with the Iraqi government -- the one we've disingenuously told the world we're in Iraq to support -- showing its political maturation to get us out the day after tomorrow. And out actually means out. The SOFA demands that every last U.S. serviceman is on a plane by December 31, 2011. Obama's plan for a 30,000-troop residual force? Officially overtaken by events. As I say, the impact of this appears not to have sunken in. The Iraqis have forced an end to the war.

But the neocons are determined to get every last day out of their war. At Commentary, Abe Greenwald spins the cabinet's vote as favorably as he can:

What happens to the claim that Barack Obama’s drawdown plan was consonant with the hopes of the Iraqi leadership? The agreement calls for American troops to be in Iraq for three more years. That’s 36 months - more than twice the length of time Obama has proposed troops stay in the country.

Nevertheless, President Obama will heed the new reality.

There is far too much resting on the successful fulfillment of this agreement for Obama to defy it. For starters, it is a watershed moment for American-Iraqi relations and Iraqi sovereignty... Tearing up a cooperative agreement so delicately arrived at would go down as a diplomatic and geopolitical travesty for the Obama administration — proving, as it would, that America’s talk of freedom and democracy is piffle.

I'm not sure that Obama couldn't stick to his 16 month deadline, if he wanted to, without contravening the agreement. As far as I'm aware (and I only have leaks to work with - no-one's seen the final wording in public yet), the agreement only says US troops must withdraw no later than Dec. 31, 2011, and makes no mention of prohibiting an earlier withdrawal.

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And it's 1..2...3..what are we not fighting for?

Via Kevin Drum comes a piece in the NYT looking at the powderkeg of factional tensions in Mosul.

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is squeezing out Kurdish units of the Iraqi Army from Mosul, sending the national police and army from Baghdad and trying to forge alliances with Sunni Arab hard-liners in the province, who have deep-seated feuds with the Kurdistan Regional Government led by Massoud Barzani.

....“It’s the perfect storm against the old festering background,” warned Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, who oversees Nineveh and Kirkuk Provinces and the Kurdish region. Worry is so high that the American military has already settled on a policy that may set a precedent, as the United States slowly withdraws to allow Iraqis to settle their own problems. If the Kurds and Iraqi government forces fight, the American military will “step aside,” General Thomas said, rather than “have United States servicemen get killed trying to play peacemaker.”

As one of Drum's commenters notes:

As I recall it, the program was: (1) increase troop levels (2) to reduce the violence to make space for (3) political reconciliation that will provide the foundation for (4) a reduction in violence not dependent on American troops (5) that will enable us to gradually withdraw without having to worry about whether Iraq will blow up again.

We never got past step 2. Now the reckoning.

That reckoning will involve violence, in more than one place and between more than just two factions, in the lead up to Iraq's provincial elections. The only real question is: how bad will it get? I totally understand Brig. Gen Thomas' wish not to have his people die policing a civil war six years into the U.S. occupation but doesn't this blow wide open the conservative talking point, so beloved of both Bush and McCain, that US troops have to stay in Iraq to help prevent such violence? Why are we still there?

Of course, if there's no new status of forces deal by January Thomas' plans become moot, since it's likely US forces would be confined to base anyway. In fact, they're using the threat of exactly that to try to strongarm Iraqi into accepting an agreement it isn't happy with. McClatchy reports:

The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country on Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn't agree to a new agreement on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq.

Many Iraqi politicians view the move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Sunday.

In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector and other areas _ "everything" _ said Tariq al Hashimi, the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. "I didn’t know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services."

Hashimi said that Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, listed “tens” of areas of potential cutoffs in a three-page letter, and he said the implied threat caught Iraqi leaders by surprise.

But if the US military is planning to stay out of any faction fights anyway, just how much of a threat is that?

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Despite Condi Rice's prevarications, it's now looking certain that the US will be forced to accept Iraqi demands that any new "status of forces" deal be for only 3 years and to stipulate all US troops out of Iraqi urban areas by 2009. A draft of the agreement is being circulated to Iraqi political leaders for their approval and it says that while there will be no firm schedule for a U.S. withdrawal, they want U.S. combat troops to go home by the end of 2011.

Obama already has his statement out, and it's a doozy. (H/T Spencer Ackerman):

"I am glad that the Administration has finally shifted to accepting a timetable for the removal of our combat troops from Iraq. Success in Iraq depends on an Iraqi government that is reconciling its differences and taking responsibility for its future, and a timetable is the best way to press the Iraqis to do just that. I welcome the growing convergence around this pragmatic and responsible position.

"This agreement is still draft and vital pieces of it must be finalized, so I will reserve final judgment on the agreement until it is complete. The agreement needs to be carefully reviewed, and must include immunity for U.S. troops and Defense Department personnel from Iraqi jurisdiction. I continue to believe that in consultation with our commanders and the Iraqi government, we can safely redeploy at a pace that removes our combat brigades in 16 months, with a residual force to target remnants of al Qaeda; to protect our service members and diplomats; and to train Iraq's Security Forces if the Iraqis make political progress.

"Senator McCain has stubbornly focused on maintaining an indefinite U.S presence in Iraq, but events have made his bluster and record increasingly out of touch with reality. While Senator McCain continues to offer unconditional military and economic support for Iraq, I strongly believe that we need to use our leverage with the Iraqi government to ensure a political settlement. In addition to a timetable, we should only train Iraqi Security Forces if Iraq's leaders reconcile their differences, and we must insist that Iraq invests its $79 billion surplus on rebuilding its own country. It's time to succeed in Iraq and to honor the sacrifice of our servicemen and women by leaving Iraq to a sovereign Iraqi government.

"Ending the war in Iraq responsibly is in the broader strategic interests of the United States. It's long past time to drawdown our troop presence and to stop spending $10 billion a month in Iraq so that we can increase resources for the mission in Afghanistan, rebuild our military, and invest in our struggling economy at home," said Senator Obama.

Spencer's bang on when he says this hits all the right notes.

First, it makes the point that the administration came around to the wisdom of Obama's position after exhausting the alternatives. Second, it portrays Obama's position as the consensus view. Third, it puts McCain on the horns of a dilemma: Either endorse Obama's consensus position -- and thereby flip-flop and concede his opponent's judgment is superior -- or be out of the responsible mainstream. Third-and-a-half, if McCain stays consistent, the Obama line draws a wedge between Bush and McCain.

But there's a fourth reason, and it's the most crucial of all. Did you notice how Obama is talking about "success in Iraq"? He's taking that concept and giving it a common-sense meaning: getting out responsibly -- that is, leveraging withdrawal into a diplomatic strategy with the Iraqi government and the region -- is what success means.

A definition of success that actually works and a plan that even the Bush administration has come around to, albeit very reluctantly. That shows both leadership and judgement.