{"id":10761,"date":"2007-05-10T15:00:54","date_gmt":"2007-05-10T19:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10761.html"},"modified":"2007-05-10T15:00:54","modified_gmt":"2007-05-10T19:00:54","slug":"iraqi-lawmakers-endorse-us-withdrawal-timeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/iraqi-lawmakers-endorse-us-withdrawal-timeline\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi lawmakers endorse U.S. withdrawal timeline"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a variety of reasons (terrorism, crumbling infrastructure, boycotts, fear), Iraq’s parliament doesn’t meet very often<\/a> to govern, but that doesn’t mean lawmakers don’t have noteworthy things to say<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A majority of Iraqi lawmakers have signed onto draft legislation calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq and demanding a freeze on the number of such troops already in the country, lawmakers said Thursday.<\/p>\n

The legislation was being discussed even as U.S. lawmakers were locked in a dispute with the White House over their call to start reducing the size of the U.S. force here in the coming months.<\/p>\n

The proposed Iraqi legislation, drafted by the parliamentary bloc loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was signed by 144 members of the 275-member house, according to Nassar al-Rubaie, the leader of the Sadrist bloc.<\/p>\n

The Sadrist bloc, which holds 30 parliamentary seats and sees the U.S.-led forces as an occupying army, has pushed similar bills before, but this would be the first time it had garnered the support of a majority of lawmakers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I’m not necessarily surprised that a Sadrist bloc would rally opposition to the United States’ presence in Iraq, but the fact that a majority of the parliament is on board with such a plan, White House rhetoric notwithstanding, appears to be part of a sea-change.<\/p>\n

I’m curious: why hasn’t this become a big story? The excerpt above came from an AP article, which followed a piece from Alternet<\/a> yesterday, but otherwise, I haven’t seen mention of it at any major news outlet. It’s possible that the major media is waiting for the withdrawal resolution to be formally voted on — right now, it’s only a draft that hasn’t been formally introduced — but it’s still rather striking that it’s garnered majority support already, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

For that matter, if this resolution is<\/i> formally approved by the parliament, how, exactly, does the administration respond to that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a variety of reasons (terrorism, crumbling infrastructure, boycotts, fear), Iraq’s parliament doesn’t meet very often to govern, but that doesn’t mean lawmakers don’t have noteworthy things to say. A majority of Iraqi lawmakers have signed onto draft legislation calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq and demanding a freeze […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}