WaPo:
BAGHDAD, Oct. 19 -- Key members of the Iraqi parliament's largest political bloc have called for all American troops to leave this country in 2011 as a condition for allowing the U.S. military to stay here beyond year's end, officials said Sunday.
The change sought by the influential United Iraqi Alliance would harden the withdrawal date for U.S. troops. A draft bilateral agreement completed this week would require American forces to leave by December 2011 but would allow for an extension by mutual agreement.The Shiite bloc, which includes Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party, also insists that Iraqi officials have a bigger role in determining whether U.S. soldiers accused of wrongdoing are subject to prosecution in Iraqi courts, said Sami al-Askeri, a political adviser to Maliki. That proposal has been resisted by the Pentagon.
If the Iraqi alliance's conditions are not met, "I cannot see that this agreement will see the light," said Askeri, who is also a lawmaker from Maliki's party.
t was not immediately clear whether the U.S. side would accept the changes to the draft agreement. The document would provide legal authority for American troops to remain in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires Dec. 31. If there is no accord or other legal cover for U.S. forces, they must leave.
Think about that first sentence again. The Iraqis are giving us a choice: be out by the end of the year, or stay until 2011 but under specific conditions. The Bush doesn't like either option, so despite the fact that the sovereign government of Iraq (you know, the one elected with all of those purple fingers?) wants us to leave, they are searching for a third solution.
What precisely are Americans sacrificing so much for if they don't even want us in their country? Clearly the democracy and freedom things aren't it anymore, because we are fighting the parliament just to stay. Seriously, what's the point of all this?
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is going to hell in a handcart.
The general says he can do something about the fight he sees the enemy planning for the winter, which he predicts will be the most violent yet. Given what he's expecting, how under-resourced is he?
"I've been very clear that I need more resources, more soldiers and more assets," Schlosser.Those assets can't come soon enough for Capt. Kilbride and his men, as 60 Minutes found out on a mission in search of a reported roadside bomb.
They didn't find it that day. But the morning after the 60 Minutes team left, a U.S. Humvee hit a roadside bomb in the same area. Photographs from the scene show the vehicle was obliterated, killing everyone inside - an Afghan interpreter and four of Kilbride's soldiers. For the captain, who was putting out the flames moments after the blast, it was the bloodiest day so far.
"Nothing's easy," he says. "It's gonna be a long fight. I'm not telling you that it's gonna happen tomorrow. I'm not gonna tell you it's gonna happen next year. But, you know, it might be 12, 15 years from now and we're still in Afghanistan."
With our help, Afghanis spent a decade fighting and eventually ousting the Soviet Union. Then when both the USSR and the US left Afghanistan to collapse, the country descended into a decade of brutal civil war, a conflict that only stopped when the Taliban imposed order. And after that, a decade or more of yet another war, this time led by the US. And in the end? The Taliban and al Qaeda are as strong as ever, and Pakistan is dangerously close to collapse. What a wonderful set of foreign policies we have.
