This Day In History - 20 June: Attila Defeated, Oxford Chartered, Victoria's Coronation, & Maliki's Birthday

Art: Le Guepier, William Bouguereau

451 – This day began with "the whole fate of western civilization hanging in the balance." Attila the Hun threatened to overrun Rome and establish a pagan empire in the West. He was met on the field of battle by a Christian army composed of Visigoths under Theodoric I and Romans led by Flavius Aetius. In the end, they defeated Attilla at the Battle of Chalons.

1214 – In a critical development during the medieval period, the University of Oxford received its charter from King Edward III, bcoming the first, and today, the oldest university in the English speaking world. By 1209, it boasted over 3,000 students.

1631 – Muslim pirates sack the Irish village of Baltimore, carrying off 108 Christian men, women and children as slaves. Some are made galley slaves, others sex slaves in harems, with only two ever making it back to Ireland.

1756 – Indian rebels who captured a British garrison then imprisoned the men in what became infamously known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. It was actually the guard room in the old Fort William, Calcutta, India. Conditions were so cramped and the heat so great that within a day, of the 146 imprisoned there, 123 men died.

1782 – The U.S. Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States. Obama later adopted it during his campaign.

1789 – Deputies of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, it being one of the final events leading to the French Revolution.

1791 – King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family begin the Flight to Varennes disguised as the servants of a Russian baroness during The French Revolution. This attempt at escape was ultimately unsuccessful. They were captured, returned to Paris under guard, and would loose their heads with two years.

1819 – The SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool, UK. She is the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, although most of the journey was made under sail.

1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne. She would rule Britain for over 67 years, overseeing the growth of Britain into the superpower of the era.

1840 – Samuel Morse received a patent for the telegraph.

1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installed the world's first commercial telephone service in Canada.

1893 – Lizzie Borden, accused of axe murdering her family, was acquitted by a Massachusetts court. The crime of which she was accused has never been solded.

1944 – The Japanese air and naval forces, decimated at Guadalcanal and replaced by inexperienced troops, suffered an overwhelming defeat at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, also known as the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”.

1963 – The "red telephone" is established between the Soviet Union and the United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1991 – Following the reunification with East Germany, the German parliament decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.

Births

236 BC – Scipio Africanus, the finest Roman general of his era. He would finally defeat Rome's mortal enemy, Hannibal at the battle of Zama, bringing an end to the Second Punic War.

1005 – Ali az-Zahir, Seventh Caliph of the Egyptian Fatimid dynasty. He would try to repair some of the damage done to relations with Christians by his predecesor who had destroyed Christianity's holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But it was too little, too late, and Pope Urban II would eventually call for the first Crusade to liberate Jerusalem.

1924 – Audie Murphy, American actor and war hero. He lied about his age and enlisted in the Army in 1942 at the age of 16. In 27 months of combat action, Murphy became one of the most highly decorated United States soldiers of World War II. He received the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military's highest award for valor, along with 32 additional U.S. and foreign medals and citations.

1950 – Nouri Al-Maliki, the current Prime Minister of Iraq. He was origninally challenged as weak and as a tool of Iran, not given any chance of succeeding in leading Iraq to peace and stability. But when the "surge" began, Maliki threw his entire weight behind it, turning on Iranian interests. He has already earned a place in Iraqi history, and that place will be high in the pantheon indeed if he is able to finally unify Iraq and strengthen its democracy.

Deaths

451 – Theodorid, King of the Visigoths, died defending Western Civilization against the mortal threat of Attilla the Hun.

Holidays and observances

Today is the feast day for the tenth century Saint, Adalbert of Magdeburg. He was the first Archbishop of Magdeburg from 968 and a successful missionary to the Slavic peoples to the east of Germany.

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Obama, Principles & Iraq

Amir Taheri's NY Post column on Monday accusing Obama of attempting to subvert our negotiations with Iraq was such a serious charge, I opted to wait for additional confirmation before blogging it. Hostilities in Iraq are ongoing, though at a reduced level, and with an expansionist Iran as a next door neighbor, a resumption of major hostilities is clearly possible. For their safety and security, our soldiers must have a clear framework within which to operate in Iraq - and indeed, they need additional authorization even to be there after the UN mandate expires. What Obama has done is insinuate himself into the President's negotiations on that framework, attempting to sabotage them. Obama did so without authority and with an apparent goal of advancing his own ambitions. Now called on it, Obama, true to form, is trying to obfuscate the situation and parse terms rather than take responsibility for his actions.

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The existing framework and authorization for our soldiers in Iraq, the UN Mandate, expires in January, 2009. The U.S. and Iraqi government have been negotiating for a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which would provide the legal framework for our troops in Iraq. It is an agreement with Iraq that defines the legal and administrative rights of our soldiers while in that country. Operational issues - troop levels, right to take unilateral military actions, etc. - are the subject of a related Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA). The two agreements are two interrelated halves of a whole, both being necessary for our continued presence and activities in Iraq after the expiration of the UN Mandate. And indeed, according to the Congressional Research Service, the Bush administration and Iraq have been negotiating both agreements as part of a single package.

It is now confirmed that when Obama was there in July, he insinuated himself into this process, attempting to undercut the Bush administration and stop Iraq from negotiating these agreements or agreeing to time horizons for withdraw. This from Amir Taheri on Monday:

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.

By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.

Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.

Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.

According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.

Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.

Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.

Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."

Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."

Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.

Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.

Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.

This is a very serious charge in many respects. Obama has no authority to negotiate on behalf of the U.S., and for him to undercut the sitting President in the exercise of his Article 2 powers during hostilities is outrageous, if not criminal. Confirmation from muliple sources has since occurred. This from the American Spectator:

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January.

The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari to confirm the conversation, and there was concern that there were enough aggressive reporters based in Baghdad with the sources to confirm the conversation that to deny the comments would create a bigger problem . . .

Amazing. And even more outrageous is the incredibly deceptive response from the Obama camp that they finally settled upon. The Obama camp responded by calling the Taheri article "a pack of lies," admitting that Obama made the request to Iraq that they stop negotiating with Bush, but claiming that Obama was only referring to the SFA:

But Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri's article bore "as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial."

In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.

In the face of resistance from Bush, the Democrat has long said that any such agreement must be reviewed by the US Congress as it would tie a future administration's hands on Iraq.

"Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations, nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades," Morigi said.

President Bush is operating pursuant to his Article II powers and Congress's Authorization For Use Of Military Force - Iraq passed in 2002. No one can argue with a straight face that he does not have the power to negotiate the above agreements with the sole exception that he cannot make a formal security agreement with Iraq nor commit the U.S. to keep forces in Iraq once hostilities are recognized as concluded - and thus ending Congressional authorization for engaging in military force in Iraq. Thus, Obama's denial here is just incredibly disingenuous. Regardless of how Obama, a professor of Constitutional Law, might wish to parse and obfuscate this, his actions were completely out of bounds and taken not in the best interests of the U.S. or our soldiers deployed in Iraq, but in the best interests of his campaign for President.

That said, Amir Taheri is pushing back today against both the response from the Obama camp and the mountain of death threats he has received for accurately reporting Obama's actions while visiting Iraq:

. . . the claim that Obama only wanted the Strategic Framework Agreement delayed until a new administration takes office, and had no objection to a speedy conclusion of a Status of Forces Agreement, is simply untrue.

Here is how NBC reported Obama's position on June 16, after his conversation in the US with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari: "Obama also told Zebari, he said, that Congress should be involved in any negotiations regarding a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. He suggested it may be better to wait until the next administration to negotiate such an agreement."

In other words, Obama wanted a delay on the Status of Forces Agreement, not on the Strategic Framework Agreement - as his rebuttal now claims.

The NBC report continues: "Asked by NBC's Lee Cowan if a timetable for the Status of Forces Agreement was discussed, Obama said, 'Well he, the foreign minister, had presented a letter requesting an extension of the UN resolution until the end of this year. So that' s a six-month extension.'ñ"

That Obama was aware that the two accords couldn' t be separated is clear in his words to NBC:

"Obviously, we can' t have US forces operating on the ground in Iraq without some sort of agreement, either a further extension of the UN resolution or some sort of Status of Forces agreement, some strategic framework agreement. As I said before, my concern is that the Bush administration -- in a weakened state politically -- ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it was my administration or Sen. McCain' s administration." (Emphasis added.)

Obama also told NBC: "The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that's currently made, but I think the only way to assure that is to make sure that there is strong bipartisan support, that Congress is involved, that the American people know the outlines of this agreement.

"And my concern is that if the Bush administration negotiates, as it currently has, and given that we're entering into the heat of political season, that we're probably better off not trying to complete a hard-and-fast agreement before the next administration takes office, but I think obviously these conversations have to continue.

"As I said, my No. 1 priority is making sure that we don' t have a situation in which US troops on the ground are somehow vulnerable to, are made more vulnerable, because there is a lack of a clear mandate."

This confirms precisely what I suggested in my article: Obama preferred to have no agreement on US troop withdrawals until a new administration took office in Washington.

Obama has changed position on another key issue. In the NBC report, he pretends that US troops in Iraq do not have a "clear mandate." Now, however, he admits that there is a clear mandate from the UN Security Council and that he'd have no objection to extending it pending a bilateral Iraq-US agreement.

The campaign's rebuttal adds other confusions to the mix. It notes that Obama (along with two other senators who accompanied him) also stated in July: "We raised a number of other issues with the Iraqi leadership, including our deep concern about Iranian financial and material assistance to militia engaged in violent acts against American and Iraqi forces; the need to secure public support through our respective legislatures for any long term security agreements our countries negotiate; the importance of doing more to help the more than 4 million Iraqis who are refugees or internally displaced persons; and the need to give our troops immunity from Iraqi prosecution so long as they are in Iraq."

Note that in this part of the statement, the term "security agreements" is used instead of SOFA and SFA - another sign that the two can' t be separated.

In any case, I never said Obama didn't raise other issues with the Iraqis. Yet all those issues have been the subject of US-Iraqi talks between the US and Iraq (and of conferences attended by Iraq's neighbors) for the last five years. Simply repeating them isn' t enough to hide the fact that Obama' s policy on Iraq consists of little more than a few contradictory slogans.

My account of Obama's message to the Iraqis was based on a series of conversations with Iraqi officials, as well as reports and analyses in the Iraqi media (including the official newspaper, Al Sabah) on the senator's trip to Baghdad. It is also confirmed by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

In a long interview with the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, Zebari says: "Obama asked me why, in view of the closeness of a change of administration, we were hurrying the signing of this special agreement, and why we did not wait until the coming of the new administation next year and agree on some issues and matters."

Again, note that Zebari mentions a single set of agreements, encompassing both SFA and SOFA.

Zebari continues: "I told Obama that, as an Iraqi, I believe that even if there is a Democratic administration in the White House it had better continue the present policy instead of wasting a lot of time thinking what to do."

In other words, Obama was trying to derail current US policy, while Zebari was urging him not to "waste time."

Zebari then says: "I pointed out to him [Obama] that the agreement being negotiated [with the US] was not to be necessarily binding on the future administration unless it wanted to cooperate with the people of Iraq instead of [causing] crises and problems from its very start."

According to Zebari, Obama said "some media reports that I want all [American] forces withdrawn are wrong. I want to keep American forces [in Iraq] to train [the Iraqi army] and fight terrorism." This is precisely what US troops have been doing in Iraq for the last five years.

Zebari then says that he had the impression that US policy in Iraq wouldn't change: "The US has permanent strategic interests in our region. A change in the administration would not change realities and priorities and would not mean a change of policy as a whole." (Full text of the Zebari interview is available on Asharqalawsat.com)

Contrary to what Obama and his campaign have said, Iraqi officials insist that at no point in his talks in Washington and Baghdad did Obama make a distinction between SOFA and SFA when he advised them to wait for the next American administration.

The real news I see in the Obama statement is that there may be an encouraging evolution in his position on Iraq: The "rebuttal" shows that the senator no longer shares his party leadership's belief that the United States has lost the war in Iraq.

He now talks of "the prospect of lasting success," perhaps hoping that his own administration would inherit the kudos. And he makes no mention of his running mate Joe Biden's pet project for carving Iraq into three separate states. He has even abandoned his earlier claim that toppling Saddam Hussein was "illegal" and admits that the US-led coalition's presence in Iraq has a legal framework in the shape of the UN mandate.

In his statement on my Post article, Obama no longer talks of "withdrawal" but of "redeployment" and "drawdown" - which is exactly what is happening in Iraq now.

While I am encouraged by the senator's evolution, I must also appeal to him to issue a "cease and desist" plea to the battalions of his sympathizers - who have been threatening me with death and worse in the days since my article appeared.

This issue is probably too convuluted for it to have the impact that it should. For that to happen, the MSM would need to explain it to the public. What Obama has done here is a travesty for which he should be held to account. I will not hold my breath waiting for the MSM to do their job.

More on this in links at Memorandum.

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Michael O'Hanlon Joins The Argument Against Withdraw From Iraq On A Timetable

Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, whose article on Iraq in the NYT in July, 2007, "A War We Might Just Win." , was pivotal in reducing pressure on the Bush administration to end the surge before it could work, have now weighed in again on the topic of Iraq. Fresh from a recent trip, and joined in their article this time by Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, they see the "timeline" approach and a large-scale withdraw of U.S. troops by 2010 as risking all the gains that have been made in Iraq to date. They explain why the security gains have occurred - the surge - and the tenuousness of those gains in the absence of a significant presence of U.S. troops this morning in the op-ed pages of the NYT. Key to maintaining the peace for the next few years is the fact that it is the U.S. military presence that is trusted by all sides and whose presence both dampens the thoughts of trying to take advantage of one's neighbours and largely insures the validity of the next two rounds of scheduled elections at the provincial and national level.

This from Mr. O'Hanlon, Pollack and Biddle:

ALMOST everyone now agrees there has been great progress in Iraq. The question is what to do about it.

Democrats led by Barack Obama want to take a peace dividend and withdraw all combat brigades by May 2010. Republicans like John McCain want to keep troops in Iraq until conditions on the ground signal the time is ripe. And now the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has endorsed a timetable for withdrawal, though he seems to favor a somewhat slower pace than the Democrats propose.

If the Iraqi government tells us to leave, we should go. But this would be a bad deal for both Iraqis and Americans. Iraq is indeed much more secure than it was two years ago, thus it seems safe to suggest timing goals for significant withdrawals. Yet having recently returned from a research trip to Iraq, we are convinced that a total withdrawal of combat troops any time soon would be unwise. . . .

Violence in Iraq declined because the key combatants were either defeated in the field or agreed to cease-fires. These cease-fires were not accidents or temporary breathing spells. They were a systematic response to a new strategic landscape created by 2006’s sectarian bloodletting, the American surge last summer, the defeat of Al Qaeda’s forces in Anbar Province and the decision by battered Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias that fighting no longer served their interests. The underlying strategic rationale behind these stand-downs gives reason to believe that they are sustainable rather than ephemeral.

But this does not make the peace inherently stable. Wary former combatants are constantly on the lookout for signs — real or imagined — that rivals mean to take advantage of them. The cease-fires, moreover, are extremely decentralized: more than 200 tribal and regional groups have reached individual agreements with the United States to stand down from fighting; in time, some will inevitably test the waters to see what they can get away with, or will misinterpret innocent behavior from neighbors as threatening and retaliate.

A leader of one group of Sunni tribesmen who had switched allegiances and took up arms against Al Qaeda made this point at a meeting we had at Salman Pak, a military base south of Baghdad. He told us he was worried about encroachment onto his territory “from several directions” — apparently meaning he didn’t trust his Sunni neighbors any more than he trusted his traditional Shiite rivals. Left on their own, minor local flashpoints could easily spiral into a renewal of widespread violence.

For now, the American combat presence plays a critical role in enforcing the terms of these cease-fire deals and damping escalatory incentives from spoiler violence. Iraqi government security forces, while they demonstrated improved effectiveness this spring in places like Basra and the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, cannot yet play this role themselves.

In part this is because they are still not trusted by all cease-fire participants. To many Sunnis in particular, a government military commanded by a Shiite regime is not yet trustworthy enough to be tolerated without an American presence to keep it honest. To some extent, this is changing: for example, the National Police have replaced three-fourths of its leaders over the last year or so and now have more than a proportionate share of Sunnis in command positions.

But full reconciliation will take time. On our recent trip, we heard several Sunni sheiks — one was a brother of Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, the Americans’ staunchest ally in Anbar until he was assassinated last fall — talk about their newfound regard for Prime Minister Maliki. However, some also discussed their convictions that most other Shiite politicians were “bums” at best and agents for Iran at worst. American troops, by contrast, are generally trusted, if not necessarily loved.

Troop loyalty is not the only concern. The Iraqi security forces are simply not yet able to operate effectively without United States air support, combat advisers and help with logistics and intelligence. When Iraqi units with no American embeds tried to take the port city of Basra last spring, they were turned back in mass confusion, and it required United States combat help to save the day.

American combat troops are also critical for political progress in Iraq. There has been real political change in Iraq — but less from the grand bargains imagined by many Americans and more through thousands of informal, local decisions by war-weary groups and individuals opting to put the past behind them. The pressure from this “bottom up” process has also translated into top-down progress. Over the past year the Iraqis have passed critical amnesty, de-Baathification and provincial-powers laws, as well as a federal budget — all of which had been previously seen as hopelessly deadlocked.

But to capitalize on this progress the next two rounds of elections — provincial races this fall and a national contest next year — must go smoothly and be seen as legitimate. The elections will create losers as well as winners, breeding a grave risk of instability in an immature polity. American combat troops are needed to protect polling places from terrorism, and even more important, from voter intimidation, fraud and the perception that the results were rigged.

Over time, the need for United States contributions will diminish. The longer violence stays down, the more Iraqis’ expectations of one another will improve. Groups of former insurgents being gradually integrated into the Iraqi security forces should become more trusting of the government. And as their technical proficiency and self-sufficiency increase, the need for partnership with American combat units will decrease.

Ideally, progress will also be made on such key issues as the resettlement of four million people now displaced by violence, the equitable sharing of Iraq’s future oil revenues, and a resolution of disputed internal borders in places like the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. But this won’t happen overnight: a stable post-election environment cannot possibly be established until after next year’s elections. If current trends continue, major reductions in American troop levels will be possible — but to begin large-scale drawdowns, much less to complete them, before mid-2010 is to run serious risks.

What can be done, then? One possible model is provided by Anbar Province, which has gone from being Iraq’s most violent region in 2006 to arguably its best today. In 2007, the United States had 15 maneuver battalions in Anbar. Today it has six — far fewer, but nothing close to zero. Several hundred marines remain as advisers with Anbar’s two Iraqi Army divisions; Americans still do some joint patrols with Iraqi forces (if fewer than before), and many Americans work with provincial police and border-security forces. Anbar offers a model for large — though gradual and partial — withdrawals across Iraq that can preserve stability in the process.

American experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo are also instructive. A key to stability in the Balkans has been the presence of outside peacekeepers to enforce the deals that ended the fighting. Yet the number of peacekeeping troops had fallen by about 50 percent four years after the cease-fires were reached in both cases. The Balkan peacekeeping job was easier in some important ways, as it was built on a formal peace treaty among just a few major parties, whereas Iraq’s newfound partial stability is built on scores of local cease-fires signed in 2006 and ’07. It seems clear that withdrawing troops faster from Iraq than we did from Bosnia and Kosovo could be very risky.

Still, the Balkan experience suggests a serious prospect for major withdrawals — perhaps on the order of half the American troop presence — in the next two to three years. Thereafter, if current trends continue, reductions might proceed roughly on the Balkan schedule — with barely 10 percent of the original force expected to be remaining a decade after the end of major hostilities.

Why, then, does Prime Minister Maliki want an earlier withdrawal of United States combat forces? Part of the answer may lie in simple overconfidence: as Americans may recall from the spring of 2003, victory can easily be declared too soon. Another factor, however, surely lies in Iraqi domestic politics. With elections looming, Mr. Maliki and other members of the current government hope to demonstrate that they brought about the end of the occupation and the return to normality during their term.

Mr. Maliki in particular has sought to position himself as the symbol of Iraqi sovereignty, and surely hopes to supplant his young rival Moktada al-Sadr, the standard-bearer for Iraqi nationalism. What better way to do this than to champion a timetable for an American withdrawal, especially when the security forces that would replace the Americans are under his command and his Shiite faction enjoys the preponderance of power in Iraq?

It would be tragic, however, to allow American haste and Iraqi political opportunism to undermine a real chance for long-term stability in Iraq. Perhaps an early withdrawal would succeed, and today’s system of cease-fires would survive a rapid United States drawdown. But much important work remains to be done in Iraq. And to believe that it can be done without the longer presence of a significant number of American combat troops requires a degree of optimism that could well end up making “Mission Accomplished” look as premature today as it was in 2003.

Read the entire article. It is unfortunate that PM Maliki chose such a pivotal time to act with hubris and overconfidence.

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General Petraeus Goes Public With Opposition To Obama's Timelines

McClatchy Newspapers has interviewed General Petraeus on the idea of a timetable for the withdraw of all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq. While General Petraeus has warned against timelines in his repeated appearances before Congress, this is his first public assessment in the papers, during the heat of a political campaign, and with peace taking hold in Iraq. General Petraeus also addressed many of these same themes in an interview with NPR, in which he also added that PM Maliki raised the issue of tying withdraw to conditions in his meeting with Obama. Obama, for his part, continues to "refine" his position on Iraq.

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This from a McClatchey interview with General Petraeus:

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq isn't buying the increasingly popular idea of a publicly stated timetable for American troop withdrawal.

Gen. David Petraeus, the Iraq commander, said in an interview with McClatchy that the situation in Iraq is too volatile to "project out, and to then try to plant a flag on, a particular date."

With violence at its lowest levels of the war, politicians in both the United States and Iraq are getting behind the idea of a departure timetable. . . .

. . . "We occasionally have commanders who have so many good weeks, (they think) it's won. We've got this thing. Well we don't. We've had so many good weeks. Right now, for example we've had two-and-a-half months of levels of violence not since March 2004," he said from his office at Camp Victory.

"Well that's encouraging. It's heartening. It's very welcome. But let's keep our powder dry. . . .Let's not let our guard down."

Petraeus is pushing for a more nuanced debate as both U.S. and Iraqi political leaders are in campaign seasons, with many voters in both countries wanting to hear there is an end. Maliki is trying to sway voters in time for this fall's scheduled provincial elections by winning support from his political rival, firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr, who has called for a U.S. withdrawal date since 2004.

Throughout his tenure, Petraeus has argued for a drawdown based on conditions, saying that the last of the five surge brigades could leave earlier this month because Iraqi forces are increasingly capable of securing Iraq.

Petraeus said that while both Sunni and Shiite extremists groups are weaker, Iraqi security forces still face threats as the groups try to reconstitute themselves throughout Iraq. And because of that, U.S. and Iraqi forces must not assume that the battle here is won, he said.

Maliki's surprise spring offensive in the southern port city of Basra was a turning point in the security situation. It rid Iraq's second-largest city of militia control and bolstered the confidence of both the Iraqi people and military. But the Iraqi security forces turned to U.S. troops to help them win, leading some to call for a more cautious withdrawal plan.

Petraeus has said he believes there will be a "long-term partnership" in which the U.S. acts primarily in an advisory role to Iraqi forces, but with enough combat power to step in and help if major battles erupt. But he said that that like most things in Iraq, plans could change.

"We know where we are trying to go. We know how we think we need to try to get there with our Iraqi partners and increasingly with them in the lead and shouldering more of the burden as they are," Petraeus said.

"But there are a lot of storm clouds out there, there are lots of these possible lightning bolts. You just don't know what it could be. You try to anticipate them and you try to react very quickly. . . .It's all there, but it's not something you want to lay out publicly."

Read the entire article.

General Petraeus also spoke in an NPR interview this morning. He tactfully says that Maliki's seeming call for timelines of withdraw need to be read in respect of the elections also coming up in Iraq. The situation has drastically improved, but there are "many challenges" ahead. (H/T Hot Air)

As I've written before, Iran is still an existential danger to Iraq and will be until Iran's theocracy is driven from power or it succeeds in turning at least southern Iraq into a satellite. With that in mind, it is important to view security gains in Iraq with the thought that there will inevitably be further proxy assaults from Iran. An actual withdraw of all combat forces within sixteen months would, in all likelihood, be an incredible disaster.

Obama has taken the position the mostly contradictory position that he will listen to the advice of his commanders on the ground during the sixteen month drawdown - though not as to the timetable for withdraw. I noted this glaring inconsistency in his speech in Jordan given the day after his 'check the block' visit to Iraq. Hot Air picked it up the same theme in response to another interview:

According to The One, the president sets the strategy: Most troops out in 16 months but some left behind for various missions. The generals supply the tactics: To carry out those missions responsibly, we need X number of troops. What does X equal? Why, it’s … “entirely conditions-based”

It seems Obama is trying to refine his Iraq position as far as he can without bringing down the wrath of his base who want, above all else, to have Iraq declared a defeat for the U.S.

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NYT Acknowledges The Decline Of The Sadrists

On top of the AP article of the other day stating the judgement that we are winning the war in Iraq, todays NYT article must have swine across the globe filing flight plans. After over a year of spinning Sadr and his Mahdi Army as all powerful and all popular Iraqi nationalists, the NYT finally acknowledges that Sadr and his militias are anything but - though there is still the spectre of it arising from the dead.

That said, the NYT still puts its old spin on it all. They refuse to acknowledge that the Mahdi Army were Iranian proxies from inception. The Mahdi Army was a creation of Iranian sponsorship and organized by Hezbollah uber-terrorist Imad Muginayah. The NYT, like the rest of the far left, is quite willing to ignore reality in order to argue against any use of force against the Western world's most existential threat, Iran.

Further, the NYT gives no credit to U.S. forces or the surge for the decline in Sadr's fortunes. Prior to the surge, PM Maliki had been protecting Sadr. Half the reason for the surge was to target Sadr's militia and to break its hold on power. PM Maliki, faced with a rebellion that saw other Shia elements in the government talking with Sunnis and Kurds about forming a ruling coalition and ousting Maliki in Dec. 2007 finally brought Maliki around. He removed his protection from Sadr. At that point, Sadr ran for Iran and his Mahdi Army - having been decimated twice before by U.S. forces - went underground and has been methodically weeded out by U.S. forces. Add to that, beginning in March, Iraqi forces.

This article, moreso than the AP article of yesterday, could qualify as an effort to give support to the Obama narrative that the defeat of Sadr/Iran might well have occurred irrespective of the surge. But perhaps not intentionally, as it is done with more subtelty than is usually seen in the NYT's agenda journalism.
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This from the NYT:

The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.

It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki struck another blow this spring, when he led a military operation against it in Baghdad and in several southern cities.

The shift, if it holds, would solidify a transfer of power from Mr. Sadr, who had lorded his once broad political support over the government, to Mr. Maliki, who is increasingly seen as a true national leader.

. . . The Mahdi Army’s decline also means that the Iraqi state, all but impotent in the early years of the war, has begun to act the part, taking over delivery of some services and control of some neighborhoods.

“The Iraqi government broke their branches and took down their tree,” said Abu Amjad, a civil servant who lives in the northern Baghdad district of Sadr City, once seen as an unbreachable stronghold for the group.

The change is showing up in the lives of ordinary people. The price of cooking gas is less than a fifth of what it was when the militia controlled local gas stations, and kerosene for heating has also become much less expensive. In interviews, 17 Iraqis, including municipal officials, gas station workers and residents, described a pattern in which the militia’s control over the local economy and public services had ebbed. Merchants say they no longer have to pay protection money to militiamen. In some cases, employees with allegiances to the militia have been fired or transferred. Despite the militia’s weakened state, none of the Iraqis interviewed agreed to have their full names published for fear of retribution.

In a further sign of weakness, Shiite tribes in several neighborhoods are asking for compensation from militia members’ families for past wrongs.

The changes are not irreversible. The security gains are in the hands of unseasoned Iraqi soldiers at checkpoints spread throughout Baghdad’s neighborhoods. And local government officials have barely begun to take hold of service distribution networks, potentially leaving a window for the militia to reassert itself.

The militia’s roots are still in the ground, Abu Amjad said, and “given any chance, they will grow again.”

At the peak of the militia’s control last summer, it was involved at all levels of the local economy, taking money from gas stations, private minibus services, electric switching stations, food and clothing markets, ice factories, and even collecting rent from squatters in houses whose owners had been displaced. The four main gas stations in Sadr City were handing over a total of about $13,000 a day, according to a member of the local council.

“It’s almost like the old Mafia criminal days in the United States,” said Brig. Gen. Jeffrey W. Talley, an Army engineer rebuilding Sadr City’s main market.

. . . A spokesman for the movement in Sadr City, Sayeed Jaleel al-Sarkhy, defended the Mahdi Army, saying in an interview that it was not a formal militia and denying the charges that it had taken control of local services. He said the militia had been infiltrated by criminals who used the name of the Mahdi Army as a cover.

“The Mahdi Army is an army of believers,” he said. “It was established to serve the people.”

An employee in the Sadr City local government who oversees trash collectors — daily laborers whose salaries he said were controlled by the militia — said that had long stopped being true.

“I am sick all over,” he said. “I am blind. I’ve got a headache. I’ve got a toothache. My back hurts. All of this is from the Mahdi Army.”

. . . A month after Mr. Maliki’s military operation, strange things started to happen in Shuala, a vast expanse of concrete and sand-colored houses in northern Baghdad that was one of the Mahdi Army’s main strongholds. Militia members suddenly stopped showing up to collect money from the main gas station, a worker there said.

A member of the Shuala district council said: “They used to come and order us to give them 100 gas canisters. Now it’s, ‘Can you please give me a gas canister?’ ”

Then, several weeks later, 11 workers, guards and even a director, all state employees with ties to the militia, were transferred to other areas. Employees’ pictures were posted so American and Iraqi soldiers could identify impostors.

The Iraqi Army now occupies the militia’s old headquarters in Shuala. Soldiers set up 18 checkpoints around the neighborhood, including at the gas station. When the militia opened a new office, soldiers put a checkpoint there, too, said an Iraqi major from the unit based there. Iraqi soldiers recently distributed warning notices to families squatting in houses whose rent had been collected by the Mahdi Army until May.

In Sadr City, the authorities closed the militia’s radio station. The leader of the district council was arrested by the American military. Cooking gas delivery documents must now be approved by three officials, not just one, the council member said.

Another sign of weakness is the growing number of financial settlements between powerful Shiites and Mahdi Army members’ families over loved ones who were killed by the militia. In Topchi, a Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad, a handwritten list of militia members’ names was taped up in the market this month, with the warning for their families to leave town. Several of their houses were attacked.

Some militia members’ families went to the local council to ask for help. They found none. Mahdi militiamen killed four local council members over several weeks last fall.

“I told them this isn’t good, they must not be blamed,” the council member said. Even so, “if your brother has been killed, this is the time for revenge.”

Now neighborhoods are breathing more freely. A hairdresser in Ameen, a militia-controlled neighborhood in southeast Baghdad, said her clients no longer had to cover their faces when they left her house wearing makeup. Minibuses ferrying commuters in Sadr City are no longer required to play religious songs, said Abu Amjad, the civil servant, and now play songs about love, some even sung by women.

“They lost everything,” said the Sadr City government employee. “The Sadr movement has no power now. There is no militia control.”

The Mahdi Army might be weak, but it is not gone.

Majid, a Sadr City resident who works in a government ministry, said several Iraqi Army officers in his area had to move their families to other neighborhoods after Mr. Maliki’s military operation because the militia threatened them. Bombs are still wounding and killing American soldiers in the district. And early this month, one Iraqi officer’s teenage son was kidnapped and killed, his body hung in a public place as a warning, said Majid, who gave only his first name because he feared reprisals.

. . . The militia is painting its response on Sadr City walls: “We will be back, after this break.”

The Iraqi Army is painting over it.

Read the entire article.

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Krauthammer On Maliki's Gambit

PM Maliki deeply undercut McCain when he appeared to embrace Obama's call for a timeline in Iraq. I've set out in a post below how Obama has vastly overplayed his hand and how McCain can fully arise from ashes of the "Maliki gambit" by refocusing his message to be more forward looking, taking full advantage of Obama's falsehoods and arrogance. I also said in that post that it was difficult to read why Maliki voted in the 2008 election on the side of a man who would have abandoned Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran years ago. Charles Krauthammer fills in the blanks.
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This from Mr. Krauthammer writing in the Washington Post:

In a stunning upset, Barack Obama this week won the Iraq primary. When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not once but several times expressed support for a U.S. troop withdrawal on a timetable that accorded roughly with Obama's 16-month proposal, he did more than legitimize the plan. He relieved Obama of a major political liability by blunting the charge that, in order to appease the MoveOn left, Obama was willing to jeopardize the astonishing success of the surge and risk losing a war that is finally being won.

Maliki's endorsement left the McCain campaign and the Bush administration deeply discomfited. They underestimated Maliki's sophistication and cunning.

What is Maliki thinking? Clearly, he believes that the Iraq war is won. Al-Qaeda is defeated, the Sunni insurgency is in abeyance, the Shiite extremists are scattered and marginalized. There will, of course, be some continued level of violence, recurring challenges to the authority of the central government and perhaps even mini-Tet Offensives by both Shiite and Sunni terrorists trying to demoralize U.S. and Iraqi public opinion in the run-up to their respective elections. But in Maliki's view, the strategic threats to the unity of the state and to the viability of the new democratic government are over.

Maliki believes that his armed forces are strong enough to sustain the new Iraq with minimal U.S. help. He may be overconfident, as he has been repeatedly in estimating his army's capacities, most recently in launching a somewhat premature attack on militias in Basra that ultimately required U.S. and British support to succeed. And he is certainly more confident of his own capacities than is Gen. David Petraeus.

Whether warranted or not, Maliki's confidence allows him to set out a rapid timetable for U.S. withdrawal, albeit conditioned on continuing improvement in the security situation -- a caveat Obama generally omits. But Maliki calculates that no U.S. president, whatever his campaign promises, would be insane enough to lose Iraq after all that has been gained and then be saddled with a newly chaotic Iraq that would poison his presidency.

So Maliki is looking ahead, beyond the withdrawal of major U.S. combat forces, and toward the next stage: the long-term relationship between America and Iraq.

With whom does he prefer to negotiate the status-of-forces agreement that will not be concluded during the Bush administration? Obama or McCain?

Obama, reflecting the mainstream Democratic view, simply wants to get out of Iraq as soon as possible. Two years ago, it was because the war was lost. Now, we are told, it is to save Afghanistan. The reasons change, but the conclusion is always the same. Out of Iraq. Banish the very memory. Leave as small and insignificant a residual force as possible. And no long-term bases.

McCain, like George Bush, envisions the United States seizing the fruits of victory from a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

. . . Any Iraqi leader would prefer a more pliant American negotiator because all countries -- we've seen this in Germany, Japan and South Korea -- want to maximize their own sovereign freedom of action while still retaining American protection.

It is no mystery who would be the more pliant U.S. negotiator. . . .

Which is why Maliki gave Obama that royal reception, complete with the embrace of his heretofore problematic withdrawal timetable.

Obama was likely to be president anyway. He is likelier now still. Moreover, he not only agrees with Maliki on minimizing the U.S. role in postwar Iraq. He now owes him. That's why Maliki voted for Obama, casting the earliest and most ostentatious absentee ballot of this presidential election.

Read the entire article.

Soccer Dad has an excellent post examining the Krauthammer article and several others to give a wider view on the topic. But as I said in my post linked at the top of the article, while this undercuts a part of McCain's message, it is an opportunity as much as a challenge.

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Refocusing McCain's Message After The Maliki Embrace of Obama

PM Maliki undercut McCain's stance on Iraq by embracing Obama's call for short timelines. Obama, a man who narcissim and arrogance clearly outweighs his judgment, has given McCain an incredible gift by denigrating the surge and claiming, incredibly, that his own plan for withdraw might have had the same impact as the surge. In light of all this, McCain can still eviscerate Obama on the issue of judgement, he merely needs to make the focus of his arguments less about Iraq in particular and more about the larger challenges we face.
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I am not sure what game Iraq PM Maliki is playing by inserting himself into U.S. politics with his comments in Der Spiegel that, in essence, though unlcear, seem to be an embrace of a 16 month timetable for withdraw of all combat forces from Iraq. Whether or not this was a mistranslation is near meaningless as it has already had whatever impact it will in the U.S. Joshua Pundit speculates that this is an attempt by Maliki to play both ends against the middle in order to extract the maximum concessions from Pres. Bush in a high stakes game of chicken over the SOFA Agreement. It JP is correct, then Maliki has made a foolish move. He would do well to remember what happened to South Vietnman and how that country was treated by its neighbors and the the U.S. after the U.S. withdrew. If you don't recall the story, you can find it in the Arthur Hermann article here.

But Iraq is a sovereign and democratic country. If the elected government at any time asks for us to remove our troops, then out we should go, posthaste. That is not the central point of this post. The question is, how is McCain to regain his footing. The "time horizons for victory" versus "time tables for defeat" is still a valid argument. Even Obama admits that General Petraeus is strongly opposed to time lines as putting all of our gains in Iraq in danger. But because of Maliki, it no longer has the importance to make it alone the decisive issue.

We still have wars going on. There is still the war in Afghanistan. There is still the problem of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan which is only going worse by the day - and which at the moment we are watching from the sidelines. There is still the problem of Iran, which could very easily become a major shooting war. Even if we finish Iraq in uncontested victory and depart that nation, we are still a nation at war.

While Maliki may have undercut McCain, Obama has provided the gift of all gifts - Kerryesque nuance on the surge. Specifically, Obama said that knowing what he knows now, he still would not vote for the surge. He is defending the indefensible. He does so by denigrating the success of the surge, he credits the Anbar Awakening and Sadr's ceasefire as the unforseeable keys to the success in Iraq and he posits that these two acts where unrelated to the U.S. actions in Iraq. Finally, he just throws up his arms saying who knew what would have happened had his plan been followed. I've spelled out the utter gaping holes in Obama's positions here.

Obama could not have given McCain more ammunition. McCain's message needs to transcend Iraq. He needs to shift the focus from 16 months or time horizons in Iraq to a combination of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Global War on Terror generally. The arguments will be the same, he merely needs to make them more global - and mine Obama's "nuance" for all it is worth.

As an aside, Americans are hardly a stupid people. Even as the entirity of the MSM has gone in the tank for Obama, the rest of America seems not to be falling in behind the MSM like lemmings. Amazingly, even as the MSM holds a wall to wall Obamathon, the Washington Post is reporting that McCain is significantly closing the gap in major battleground states. If Obama can't improve his numbers under these absolutely most favorable of conditions, he is going to have a lot of problems when the debates come around and McCain is able to finally press him eye to eye for the nation to watch.

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Judgment To Lead?

Stuttering Baracky - and he stutters a lot today - can't even exercise sound judgment with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Asked if he knew in 2007 what he knows now, would he still have been against the surge, he answers that yes, he would.



What kind of a BS answer is that?

After stuttering for 30 seconds, he says he was correct to vote against the surge because he disagreed with the Bush Administration. That is meaningless. He came out against the surge in 2007 because he claimed it would backfire, worsening security. There is no logic whatsoever to his answer, though he tries to leave the impression that his vote was based on some higher ethical principle. This guy is the penultimate con-man.

There is much, much more.

There is an additional interview on ABC and Nightline still to come, though not yet available. There is this report in advance of the showing of the Nightline interview from Marc Ambinder blogging at the Atlantic (H/T Gateway Pundit):

Sen. Barack Obama said it was "fair" to notice that he did not anticipate that the surge of U.S. troops into Iraq would be coincident with the so-called Sunni Awakening and the decisions of Shia militias to reduce their footprints, the combination of which led to measurable declines in violence.

In an interview with ABC's Terry Moran, Obama said that he "did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii’a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct."

This is a complete twisting and rewrite of history.

The Sunni Awakening Movement was well underway by September 2006 - four months before the surge was announced and Obama took his stand against it. And it was a movement that was begun by the U.S. forces soliciting a partnership. Here is a short history of the movement from the Washington Post:

In November 2005, American commanders held a breakthrough meeting with top Sunni chiefs in Ramadi, hoping to lure them away from the insurgents' fold. The sheiks responded positively, promising cooperation and men for a police force that was then virtually nonexistent.

But in January 2006 a suicide bomber attacked a police recruiting drive, killing 70 people. Insurgents killed at least four sheiks for cooperating with the Americans, and many others fled.

The killings left the effort in limbo, until a turning point; insurgents killed a prominent sheik last year and refused to let family members bury the body for four days, enraging Sunni tribesmen, said U.S. Lt. Col. Miciotto Johnson, who heads the 1st Battalion, 77th Armored Regiment and visits al-Rishawi frequently in western Ramadi.

Al-Rishawi, whose father and three brothers were killed by al-Qaida assassins, said insurgents were "killing innocent people, anyone suspected of opposing them. They brought us nothing but destruction and we finally said, enough is enough."

Al-Rishawi founded the Anbar Salvation Council in September [2006] with dozens of Sunni tribes. Many of the new newly friendly leaders are believed to have at least tacitly supported the insurgency in the past, though al-Rishawi said he never did. . . .

Read the entire article. [emphasis added]

How could Obama claim that he did not anticipate something that was already well known and in full swing by the time the surge was announced in January, 2007? And he damn well knew about by July, 2007 when he was calling for a withdraw from Iraq, explicitly saying he did not care if doing so would lead to genocide.

As to Sadr, Obama's claim is ridiculous. Sadr's forces had twice been mauled by the U.S. and when the U.S. announced the surge, Sadr's forces were dead in the cross-hairs. That was WHY Sadr ordered a pull back - to preserve his Mahdi Army against U.S. forces. Does Obama lack the judgment to see the relationship between cause and effect?

And Obama fails to even acknowledge the role Iran has played. Looking at Obama objectively, one wonders if he believes reality is whatever he wants it be.

To continue:

Moran noted that Obama had claimed that the surge "would not make a significant dent in the violence."

Responded Obama: "In the violence in Iraq overall, right. So the point that I was making at the time was that the political dynamic was the driving force between that sectarian violence. And we could try to keep a lid on it, but if these underlining dynamic continued to bubble up and explode the way they were, then we would be in a difficult situation. I am glad that in fact those political dynamic shifted at the same time that our troops did outstanding work."

"But," asked Moran,"if the country had pursued your policy of withdrawing in the face of this horrific violence, what do you think Iraq would look like now?"

Obama said it would be hard to speculate. . . .

Let me help Mr. Obama. Speculation is guessing among equally possible conclusions. One speculates when there are insufficient facts to make a reasonable projection. But if the facts clearly preponderate in one direction, you are making reasonable estimates. So . . .

In 2007, Iran was deeply involved in dominating the Shia south and al Qaeda had a stranglehold on the Sunni population that the U.S. - supported by and supporting the Awakening movements - was just starting to unravel. Had we drawn back from that, Iraq today would be divided between al Qaeda, Iran and possibly Turkey. Further, al Qaeda, which is now suffering throughout the Middle East because of its complete failure in Iraq, would be in a far stronger position internationally and global Sunni terrorism would not be falling.

See, no speculation needed.

Obama also told Moran that there were circumstances under which he could revise his instruction to U.S. generals to begin withdrawing combat brigades at the pace of one-to-two per month.

"I've always reserved the right, uh, to say---let's say that ethnic, uh, ethnic fighting broke out once again---I've reserved the right to say---I don't--I'm not going to stand idly by if genocide is occurring. . . .

Is there anything that Obama will not lie about? Obama specifically justified surrendering in Iraq irrespective of whether it would lead to genocide. Let's take a trip down memory lane to July 20, 2007:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said. Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, said it’s likely there would be increased bloodshed if U.S. forces left Iraq. . . .

Read the entire article. This is a man willing to say anything to get elected. He is as intellectually a dishonest person as I can ever recall taking the public stage - and that includes the last Democrat to hold the Presidency. Indeed, Obama puts slick Willie to shame.

Bottom line - Obama's judgment is not just suspect, but nearly nonexistent. He may have some small iota of judgement to lead, but it is utterly clear that it would be in a direction no one would want to follow.

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Doubling Down On Defeat & A Pattern Of Avoidance

Doug Ross has a superb retrospective on how our Dems have embraced defeat at all costs. After detailing their perfidy, he characterizes their actions:

They were wrong. They were unbelievably partisan, putting their interests before those of the United States and the safety of its military.

No party has been more wrong, more often, on serious issues of national import than the Democratic party since 1864.

Read the entire post.

Plus there is not only an embrace of defeat, but a refusal to defend it - at least from our would-be Messiah-in-Chief. Gateway Pundit notes that Obama met with Maliki but DID NOT raise the issue of his sixteen month timetable during the meeting - apparently wanting to avoid any fall out that might require Obama to publicly discuss "refining" his plans. To put this in context, Obama also deliberately avoided raising his sixteen month timetable when he had the opportunity to question General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker in April. He went AWOL from a town hall meeting before military families where the issue of Iraq and his embrace of defeat was almost sure to be raised - rather pointedly. And he is staying as far away as possible from any debates with McCain that are not both truncated and moderated by MSM synocophants. There is a pattern here.

What does one take from all of this. My take is that Obama is one cowardly SOB without the courage of his convictions to be able to defend his positions in any sort of pointed debate.

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What In The World Is Maliki Saying?

PM Maliki's interview with Der Spiegel has now been translated into three different versions. Did Maliki say in the interview that he wanted to see the complete withdraw of U.S. troops from Iraq within sixteen months? Translation one - no. Translation two - maybe. And now the NYT translation three - yes, and Maliki all but endorsed Obama. What is going on?

Before addressing what Maliki said, let's address the current context. We have won the counterinsurgency war in Iraq. For all of the reasons I posted here, it's over. Having called it several days ago, McCain, apparently read my post and followed suit with his own announcement of victory two days later.

Unfortunately, victory in a counterinsurgency does not mean the end to hostilities - just that the enemy is so fragmented and the government sufficiently strong that, so long as the military continues its current clean up operations aimed at pressuring the remnants of the enemy still milling about in the dark corners, the the enemy cannot conduct any sustained operations. That goes for both Iran through its proxies and al Qaeda. If major hostilities restart, and that is still possible over the next few years, it will be a new war. That said, as I wrote in my post assessing victory in the counterinsurgency war:

We will likely see significant force reductions from Iraq over the next several months and I would not be surprised to see force reductions below those of pre-surge levels by September. There is still a mission to keep the remnants of al Qaeda and the Special Groups under constant pressure. And there is a need to maintain significant combat power to dissuade Iran from any unwise moves for the foreseeable future.

So into all of this we have McCain saying we need to drawdown forces based on conditions. We have Obama who wants to "end" the a war that is already won, pulling out all combat brigades on a firm schedule of surrender over sixteen months. And now we have Maliki saying . . . what?

Hot Air captured the initial translation published by Der Spiegel of their interview with Maliki:

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. US presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16 months. Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes.

Maliki seems to be saying that most U.S. troops can withdraw, predicated on the security situation. I am less sanguine that the situation will allow a drawdown that fast, and it also depends on how you define "most of the U.S. troops." I would hardly call this an embrace of the hard timeline for which Obama has called as part of his plan to declare the Iraq war illegitimate.

That would seem to coincide with this from General Petraeus in an interview given before the Der Spiegel interview was published:



But then there was translation two, also captured at the Hot Air link above. Der Spiegel did a bit of covert midnight editing and, voila, the interview now reads:

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

Now it appears that Maliki is closer to endorsing the Obama plan, with some lip service being paid to conditions on the ground. That would be significant. But now today we get a third version where Maliki does everything but endorse Obama for President - according to a NYT translation of the still unreleased audio. This from the NYT:

. . . But in Iraq, controversy continued to reverberate between the United States and Iraqi governments over a weekend news report that Mr. Maliki had expressed support for Mr. Obama’s proposal to withdraw American combat troops within 16 months of January. The reported comments came after Mr. Bush agreed on Friday to a “general time horizon” for pulling out troops from Iraq without a specific timeline.

Diplomats from the United States Embassy in Baghdad spoke to Mr. Maliki’s advisers on Saturday, said an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss what he called diplomatic communications. After that, the government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, issued a statement casting doubt on the magazine’s rendering of the interview.

The statement, which was distributed to media organizations by the American military early on Sunday, said Mr. Maliki’s words had been “misunderstood and mistranslated,” but it failed to cite specifics.

“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.”

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”

He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”

Mr. Maliki’s top political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, declined to comment on the remarks, but spoke in general about the Iraqi position on Sunday. Part of that position, he said, comes from domestic political pressure to withdraw.

Read the entire article. Patterico, commenting on this latest translation, notes:

I trust the New York Times implicitly, which is why I see no reason for them to release the actual audio of the tape, to see if anyone disagrees with their translation. We don’t want to double-check things ourselves; we want to be told what the truth is. And yes, I’m entirely serious about that. (Click the links to see just how serious.)

UPDATE: What is the point? A number of people are making a big deal of the fact that the statement from Maliki’s office was issued by CENTCOM, after the U.S. Government contacted Maliki’s office. It is relevant, then, that Der Spiegel’s original translation contained exactly the part that Maliki’s office insists was left out of the final version — namely, an explicit condition that Maliki’s agreement to a rough 16-month timetable “[a]ssum[es] that positive developments continue.” In other words, Maliki’s support for withdrawal depends on conditions on the ground.

(H/T Instapundit) The actual audio of the interview needs to be made public to clarify what was actually said. Beyond that, Maliki may be playing an incredibly dangerous game indeed. Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that the only thing standing between Iraq as a functioning democracy and Iraq as a sattelite of Iran is the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. While Maliki may be playing for the domestic political scene as it exists today, his politicing could well undermine John McCain and do his country incredible harm in the long run if the U.S. elects as President a man whose central promise has been to declare Iraq an illegitimate war and a defeat. If we are asked to go, we of course should do so. But Maliki may have just bought himself a defeat straight from the jaws of victory.

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Maliki & Obama Have Something Common

It appears that Maliki and Obama have something in common, but despite what Obama has written in the NYT today, that something is not the desire for a precipitous withdraw of U.S. troops from Iraq based on a negotiated timeline. Rather, the similarity begins and ends at having to correct "inartful" statements by their subordinates. Obama has made a cottage industry of disowning "inartful" comments by his campaign. Maliki apparently has now had to do the same - specifically, the claim by his office that he was seeking to negotiate a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

I refrained from blogging over the past week on the claim that Maliki was seeking to negotiate a timetable for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq because it was out of character for Maliki, at least as I assessed his character over the past two years. I waited, expecting a clarification. The clarification has come. This from the BBC:

US presidential contender Barack Obama has repeatedly seized on statements attributed to Iraqi leaders to support his call for a troop withdrawal deadline.

The key statement cited by Mr Obama and others was made by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki last Monday in his address to Arab ambassadors in the United Arab Emirates.

The prime minister was widely quoted as saying that in the negotiations with the Americans on a Status of Forces Agreement to regulate the US troop presence from next year, "the direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their evacuation, or a memorandum of understanding on a timetable for their withdrawal".
That was the version of Mr Maliki's remarks put out in writing by his office in Baghdad.

It was widely circulated by the news media, and caught much attention, including that of Mr Obama.

There is only one problem. It is not what Mr Maliki actually said.

In an audio recording of his remarks, heard by the BBC, the prime minister did not use the word "withdrawal".

What he actually said was: "The direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their evacuation, or a memorandum of understanding on programming their presence."

Mr Maliki's own office had inserted the word "withdrawal" in the written version, replacing the word "presence".

Contacted by the BBC, the prime minister's office had no explanation for the apparent contradiction. An official suggested the written version remained the authoritative one, although it is not what Mr Maliki said.

The impression of a hardening Iraqi government line was reinforced the following day by comments from the National Security Adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie.

He was quoted as saying that Iraq would not accept any agreement which did not specify a deadline for a full withdrawal of US troops.

Significantly, Mr Rubaie was speaking immediately after a meeting with the senior Shiite clerical eminence, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

But in subsequent remarks, Mr Rubaie rode back from a straightforward demand for a withdrawal deadline.

He said the talks were focused on agreeing on "timeline horizons, not specific dates", and said that withdrawal timings would depend on the readiness of the Iraqi security forces.

Militant elements

The confusion reflects the dilemma facing Iraqi government leaders.
On the one hand, many of them - particularly among the Shia factions - face a public which regards the US presence as a problem rather than a solution.

With provincial elections coming up soon, they could be outflanked by more militant elements such as the supporters of cleric Moqtada Sadr, who wants American forces out now and opposes negotiations that would cover their continued presence.

Yet the government knows that its own forces are not yet in a position to stand on their own against the two major challenges they face - the Sunni radicals of al-Qaeda and related groups, and the militant Shia militias which were partly suppressed in fierce battles this spring in Basra and Baghdad.

Both groups could simply bide their time awaiting the American withdrawal before making a comeback drive.

. . . The indications are that the talks are now focusing not on deadlines for a complete withdrawal - but on phasing US troops out of Iraqi cities, and into a role providing logistical backing, firepower and air support, with a reduction of front-line troops.

"On substantive issues, there's not much daylight between the two sides," said a US official close to the troop talks with the Iraqi government.

"The troops will leave when the Iraqis are ready to take over. But they [Iraqi leaders] need to get what they need, and to get cover for it.

It is politics - how you package it, how you sell it to your people. They want our support, but they also want to show that there's progress towards sovereignty."
What the Iraqis see as issues of sovereignty have been a sticking-point in the talks, especially such items as a US demand for operational freedom and immunity from prosecution for US troops.

Officials admit that the negotiations are in a state of flux, and that the Status of Forces Agreement, which was to have been concluded this month, may end up being a simple protocol or memorandum of understanding giving some sort of legal basis for a continued US presence after the current UN mandate expires at the end of the year. . . .

Iraqi leaders will no doubt continue to make ambiguous statements. And US presidential contenders will no doubt continue to construe them to their own advantage.

But when Mr Obama visits Baghdad, as he is expected to later this month, he is unlikely to find that the Iraqi government is quite as set on demanding deadlines for US withdrawal as he would like to think.

Read the entire article.

(H/T Hot Air, Gateway Pundit)

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