Article 25 is the most important one — “Withdrawal of U.S. Forces From Iraq.” The first sub-article reads in full:

The U.S. forces shall withdraw from Iraqi territories no later than December 31 2011.

That, you’ll recall, is the date Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says George W. Bush insisted upon to save face for John McCain. (Maliki wanted a pullout in 2010, along Barack Obama’s proposed timeline.) But the sixth sub-article shows that it’s not even an ironclad insistence. Here’s the entirety of that sub-article:

U.S. forces may withdraw from Iraq before the dates indicated in this article if either of the two sides should so request. The U.S. government recognizes the Iraqi government’s sovereign right to request a withdrawal of U.S. forces at anytime.

That’s about as total a Bush administration cave-in as I can imagine. If the Iraqi government says the troops have to come home in December 2008, then a lame-duck Bush would be obligated to start the pullout. Clearly, the Iraqis blasted a Nisour Square-sized hole through the administration’s bargaining positions. I await all the anguished conservative commentary about how Bush just turned his back on five years of stalwart opposition to timetables for withdrawal.

One more thing. A hypothetical President Barack Obama has a lot to work with here. This agreement has a lot to offer an incoming administration that wants out of Iraq. On the other hand, a hypothetical President McCain would have this agreement thrown in his face by the Iraqis again and again.

Let’s review. In November 2007, George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki agreed in principle to a late-2008 deal that would set the legal terms for a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq. The Maliki government reportedly didn’t like the legal basis for the U.S. occupation — a United Nations Security Council mandate — because it considered it an affront to Iraqi sovereignty. Bush used that dissatisfaction as an opportunity to make the occupation an enduring strategic feature of U.S. foreign policy. His critics, including myself, feared that he would get his way.

Instead, it’s been a calamity for Bush. With the agreement in the final phases, most Iraqi political factions, including Maliki’s, are balking at the deal. A parliamentary rejection of the deal as it stands isn’t out of the question.  Already, the deal includes terms that the Bush administration has been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting — most importantly, a promise to leave Iraq entirely by 2011 at the latest, which is a reversal of everything Bush has ever said about “timetables” for withdrawal.

What happened? Most important, the administration again miscalculated the depth of Iraqi hostility to the occupation. It especially miscalculated the degree of pressure placed on Iraqi leaders by their people not to sign away the country’s independence, especially with provincial elections set for next year.

But as a matter of basic strategy, the administration didn’t realize that it boxed itself in. By opting against renewing the U.N. Security Council mandate authorizing the occupation — which will expire Dec. 31 — it had no choice but to accept any deal by the time the mandate expires. To remain in Iraq illegally is an absolutely untenable diplomatic position. As a result, the U.S. lost whatever leverage it actually had at the bargaining table, making it an impotent occupier despite the presence of more than 140,000 troops in the country. Whatever changes are made to the basing deal, they’ll all run in one direction: toward greater Iraqi sovereignty — and away from Bush’s desires.

What’s so extraordinary is that the administration didn’t have to abandon the Security Council authorization track. (I know, I know — a final irony, considering that abandoning the Security Council got the U.S. into the war in the first place.) At any point, this spring and summer, when the basing-deal talks deadlocked, it had the option of seeking a renewed U.N. mandate, deferring big-picture talks about the future of the U.S.-Iraq presence. But because of the administration’s hubristic insistence on forcing its successor to operate within the framework of its war, so much of what it wanted will be reversed by the very Iraqis who never asked for a U.S. occupation in the first place. Unforced errors are always the most painful.