BAGHDAD — Iraq’s cabinet on Sunday overwhelmingly approved a proposed security agreement that calls for a full withdrawal of American forces from the country by the end of 2011. The cabinet’s decision brings a final date for the departure of American troops a significant step closer after more than five and a half years of war.
The proposed pact must still be approved by Iraq’s Parliament, in a vote scheduled to take place in a week. But leaders of some of the largest parliamentary blocs expressed confidence that with the backing of most Shiites and Kurds they had enough support to ensure its approval.
Hooray! We now get to be pushed around by the militant wing of the Islamofascists, the Shiites. A President Obama would be either an idiot or a morally corrupt mongrel if he were to cave in to the same group of Islamists that caused 9/11, propped up Saddam Hussein and his Palestinian goons, and runs the clergy in Iran. As for the Kurds, they are also fanatic cowards. Not only are they fundamentally opposed to our Turkish allies, they have received tacit endorsements from Democrats, who are trying to desperately usher in the Armenians into their Kum-Bay-Ah circle. However, maintaining a Kurdish state would have a tactical side to it: we would keep the unspeakably perverse Iranians from expanding westwards. If we cannot maintain a Sunni state in Iraq's north, then we must resolve the tension with a Kurdish State.
Perhaps punishing the Turks, who have not fully cooperated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, would soon be just. But, as of now, we have bigger Islamist shrimp to fry.
Twenty-seven of the 28 cabinet ministers who were present at the two-and-a-half-hour session voted in favor of the pact. Nine ministers were absent. The nearly unanimous vote was a victory for the dominant Shiite party and its Kurdish partners. Widespread Sunni opposition could doom the proposed pact even if it has the votes to pass, as it would call into question whether there was a true national consensus, which Shiite leaders consider essential.
The proposed agreement, which took nearly a year to negotiate with the United States, not only sets a date for American troop withdrawal, but puts new restrictions on American combat operations in Iraq starting Jan. 1 and requires an American military pullback from urban areas by June 30. Those hard dates reflect a significant concession by the departing Bush administration, which had been publicly averse to timetables.
The Democrats hate the Sunnis, who at least have some semblance of sanity remaining. Freedom for the Iraqis requires Sunni cooperation and compliance, something which they would be willing to provide if we have strong leadership. Democrats also do not like the existence of the Green Zone, for reasons I cannot contemplate. Why they would be so willing to watch the Green Zone collapse and be infested by Islamist roaches is beyond me.
As for President Bush, shame on him for capitulating to the Democrats and Shiites. Islam's constructs mandate that it cannot settle any debates without a threatening exterior force goading it on. The Islamists may support this legislation, but that is only because they are unified in their opposition to America and democracy. These savages only understand negotiations at the barrel of a gun, and I say that we don't back down an inch.
Iraq also obtained a significant degree of jurisdiction in some cases over serious crimes committed by Americans who are off duty and not on bases.
The only good Islamist is a dead Islamist. The Sunnis have no need to be killed, but as for the Shiites, let them die. We should just carpet bomb the cities they exert an iron grip over, yet our Administration is too encumbered by Democrat efforts to undermine the War on Terror to do so. The fact that our troops have to take this matter on themselves is disappointing; they should NOT be prosecuted for exerting righteousness.
In Washington, the White House welcomed the vote as “an important and positive step” and attributed the agreement itself to security improvements in the past year.
Throughout the negotiations, the Shiite parties and the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, under pressure from forces both within and outside the country, had been trying to strike a balance in forging a viable agreement with the Americans that would guarantee Iraq’s security and that would still stand firm against what many, including neighboring Iran, consider a hostile force that has occupied Iraq since the spring 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
“This vote shows that the Iraqis have figured out how to stand up for themselves, to Iran and to the U.S.,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a specialist on Iraq at the Brookings Institution. “They will have stared in the face at the various options and concluded that none are ideal, but the best for their security is an amount of ongoing but finite American cooperation, while also indicating their strong desire to run their own country on their own as soon as possible.”
We've won the war, but we have much to do. Withdrawing from this region will reduce our influence in both the Middle East, and the world market as a whole. Until we can induce the entire Middle East to regard our troops as allies, our job is not done. Until unbridled capitalism flourishes in the soon-to-be former Islamic states, our job is not done.
American officials said the accord was the result of tough bargaining by the Iraqis. Speaking about the negotiations a few days before the cabinet vote, Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador, said of the 100 requests for changes sought by the Iraqi side in recent weeks: “Some were substantive, some were linguistic, some were stylistic. We looked at it all; we were as forthcoming as we could possibly be in responding.” Some Iraqi Shiite politicians said a significant factor in the cabinet decision was the approval of the pact by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, who from the outset had laid down three conditions: full Iraqi sovereignty, transparency and majority support for the pact.
Sheik Dhia al-Din al-Fayyadh, a member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, one of the largest Shiite parties, said the ayatollah did not consent until a delegation of Shiite leaders visited him on Saturday to assure him that those conditions were met. “We told him that we had got as close as we could possibly get,” Mr. Fayyadh said. “We didn’t get everything, but almost.”
Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman, said the agreement allowed for the possibility that American forces could withdraw even earlier if Iraqi forces were in a position to take over security responsibilities earlier. He also said either side had the right to cancel the agreement with one year’s notice.
This is just stupid. We've given birth to freedom, but can you let a newborn just run off? No. You have to nurture it to the point where it's self-providing, and to the point where it delivers you unbridled trust. I would think that trusting a Shiite cleric would be anathema to freedom, but that's what I've come to expect from Leftist judgments.
Several political analysts suggested that Iranian opposition to the pact had softened because of the American presidential election victory of Senator Barack Obama. He has suggested a more diplomatic approach to Tehran and has described a withdrawal timetable from Iraq faster even than the one laid out in the security agreement, though recently he has qualified that stance.
“If George Bush’s presidency were going to continue on through 2012, I think people would be a lot more concerned,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Having this administration really lightens the blow for the Iranians.”
Bush could actually kill or subdue you people. Barack Obama is too limpwristed to do so. That's why you're so afraid of us. We're in a regional war, and the only way we can accurately win it is to treat the entire reagon as threatening. Barack Obama, who wants to talk with villians that want to nuke the largest lighthouse of liberty in the Middle East, would surely treat the rest of the savages with respect they don't deserve.
A section of the agreement that Iraqi officials said barred the United States from launching attacks on neighboring countries from Iraq also may have diminished Iranian resistance.
“We sent messages to neighboring countries to say, ‘This is in our interest,’ ” said Mr. Fayyadh, the Shiite lawmaker. “Specifically we spoke to the Iranians and gave them guarantees that ‘no one will use our country to attack you.’ ” There was no immediate reaction from Iran to the vote.
In many ways, the vote can be seen as a calculated judgment by the Iraqi leaders as to who, for now, is best positioned to guarantee their political survival. It was the United States, after all, that helped usher many of the current Iraqi leaders into power and, given the improved but still fragile security situation in the country, many still see a need for an American military presence.
We certainly need to keep the current Iraqi government, yet we also need to weed out the Shiite extremists among them. Thanks to our premature introduction of democracy to the Iraqi people, the blubbering morons voted in a bunch of Shiite-sympathizing extremists that are now beholden to the terrorists politically. The last thing we need to do is to withdraw our troops and their Blackwater allies.
The presence of American troops in Iraq is governed by a United Nations resolution that expires Dec. 31. If the pact is not approved and if the Security Council were to balk at extending it, the Americans say their forces in Iraq would have to cease operations. As if to underscore the risks of no agreement, violence spiked in the two weeks leading up to the cabinet vote; on Sunday the heightened attacks included a car bombing that killed 10 in Diyala Province.
It remains unclear how hardened opponents of the agreement might respond, particularly followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. After the cabinet vote, Sadrist politicians, reiterating their opposition to the accord, claimed that as a procedural matter, parliamentary approval would require a two-thirds majority. Supporters say a simple majority will suffice.
Right. This is the same United Nations that helped Syria hide Saddam's WMDs. Yep, that's who I want to trust! Naturally, the Iraqi people are slaves to their United Nations overloards.
In a statement released Sunday night, Mr. Sadr sought once again to position himself as a nationalist opponent of the American-led forces. “I call on the Iraqi Parliament again to refuse this pact without hesitation because it is a deal to sell Iraq and its people,” said Mr. Sadr, who in a statement at Friday Prayer last week also called for armed resistance against the Americans.
He's so close to the truth, yet so far away. Perhaps a few bouts with amnesia could cure that.
Many Sunnis have opposed the pact for the opposite reason: they worry that without the Americans, they could be at the mercy of Iraq’s majority Shiite population and, behind it, the Iranians.
But Tawafiq, the largest Sunni bloc in Parliament, appears to be divided. A little more than a fourth of its members have said they will vote for the agreement, while leaders of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Tawafiq’s largest member party, said they would not approve any agreement without a national referendum, an unlikely development.
The sole minister to vote against the pact on Sunday was a Sunni, and several of the nine ministers who were not present for the vote are Sunni. “The Sunnis are probably hoping for a better deal on other things,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “Possibly they’ve concluded that this was going to pass anyway so they’d rather take this anti-American stance for their future political benefit.”
I'm astounded at the amount of Sunnis that are complete idiots about their future. Mr. O'Hanlon shares my sentiments. So does the Bush Administration. So do all right-thinking people. Just like a good person would lock his friend in a cage, if that's what it took to keep him from killing himself, we may have to keep these Sunnis under an American government until they can realize that we are their only hope for freedom. The Shiites would merrily slaughter them in a matter of seconds; thanks to the Democrats, several Sunnis were intimidated into making the wrong choice.
Several politicians said an obstacle to Parliament’s approval would be its failure to achieve a quorum, a chronic failing — especially if lawmakers immediately left for Saudi Arabia on the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Parliament quickly sought to thwart that possibility by banning members from traveling abroad.
Several politicians said an obstacle to Parliament’s approval would be its failure to achieve a quorum, a chronic failing — especially if lawmakers immediately left for Saudi Arabia on the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Parliament quickly sought to thwart that possibility by banning members from traveling abroad.
On Sunday, Shiite legislators could barely conceal their delight in the halls of the Parliament building, which still bears the marks of Mr. Hussein’s Baathist government in the form of mosaics depicting American jet bombers flying over defiant Iraqi soldiers. In a sign of their newfound boldness with the Americans, they referred to the pact as the “withdrawal agreement.”
Hadi al-Ameri, a Shiite lawmaker who leads the Badr Organization, the onetime paramilitary wing of the Supreme Council, said Shiites would seek widespread consensus in Parliament.
He also cautioned that they expected a possibly violent reaction from rejectionists, “which would have happened if we signed it, and if we didn’t sign it.”
How could Democrats like 'screw them' Kos support the ascent of such violent extremists into a governmental position? Their utter apathy about the future of the Middle East is astounding.
We have to stay the course; we cannot cut and run now, lest we allow our lighthouse to be swooped away by the Islamist hurricane that, under a Shiite government, would be inevitable. The surge is working, and if we can wallop the Shiites (and possibly the Kurds, depending on their reactions) once and for all, then we can make sure that democracy, free markets, and freedom grow in this utterly deprived region. Although the New York Times may be cheerleaders for this fatal legislation, the American people should cast them aside as egoistic, homicidal maniacs that frown upon freedom. They were the ones that tried to undermine our security at home; it is only natural for them to try to undermine security abroad.
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