{"id":16130,"date":"2008-07-08T15:45:25","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T19:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16130.html"},"modified":"2008-07-08T15:45:25","modified_gmt":"2008-07-08T19:45:25","slug":"iraq-nsa-wants-us-troop-withdrawal-timetable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/iraq-nsa-wants-us-troop-withdrawal-timetable\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq NSA wants U.S. troop withdrawal timetable"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Nouri al-Maliki first indicated yesterday that he’d like to reach an agreement with the Bush administration on either the “departure” of U.S. forces from Iraq or “a timetable on their withdrawal,” the administration initially suggested the remark may have been a transcription error<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It looks like the Iraqis actually mean it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.<\/p>\n

The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. They came a day after Iraq’s prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the United States to have some type of timetable for withdrawal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Our stance in the negotiations underway with the American side will be strong … We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn’t have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq,” al-Rubaie said. And in case you’re wondering, al-Rubaie is a Shiite lawmaker and a prominent official in the prime minister’s party.<\/p>\n

Given the timing and clarity, it’s as if the sovereign, democratically-elected Maliki government wanted to make sure no one thought it was a transcription error.<\/p>\n

Which leads us, of course, to consider how this might factor into John McCain’s vision of an indefinite war, followed by an indefinite troop presence.
\n
\nAs luck would have it, McCain was asked about this kind of scenario at the Council of Foreign Relations in 2004, and gave a very straightforward answer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Question: “What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there?”<\/p>\n

McCain’s Answer: “Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave<\/i><\/b> because — if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people<\/i><\/b>.” [emphasis added]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Adam Blickstein asked<\/a>, “Does the John McCain of 2008 agree with this assessment?” Sounds like the kind of question an enterprising political reporter might pose to the Republican candidate.<\/p>\n

I’d add, though, that McCain was asked about Maliki’s comments on MSNBC this morning, and he dismissed them out of hand, suggesting the media reports are wrong, and that Maliki’s concerns can be discounted because “he’s a politician<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Now we have the Iraqi prime minister and the Iraqi national security adviser talking openly about a withdrawal timetable. This isn’t going away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Nouri al-Maliki first indicated yesterday that he’d like to reach an agreement with the Bush administration on either the “departure” of U.S. forces from Iraq or “a timetable on their withdrawal,” the administration initially suggested the remark may have been a transcription error. It looks like the Iraqis actually mean it. Iraq’s national security […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16130","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=16130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}