Iraq, Reconciliation and … Robots

Read this great New York Times piece for a taste of how intractable the difficulties with reconciliation in Iraq are. To fully understand it, let’s imagine that instead of human beings, Iraq and the United States were populated by super-intelligent machines. Were you a RationalBot8000, you would say to More…

Odierno Threatens to Take Toys, Go Home if Iraqis Don’t Sign Base Deal

So it’s come to this.

McClatchy’s Leila Fadel reports that Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, is telling the obstinate Maliki government that unless it signs a Status of Forces Agreement with the U.S. before the end of the year, the U.S. is going More…

Finally, an Exit Strategy

It was supposed to lock in an indefinite U.S. occupation.

Last year, after the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki indicated that Iraq considered the U.N. Security Council mandate for the U.S. occupation an affront to Iraqi sovereignty, the Bush administration signed a “Declaration of Principles” with Maliki for the More…

McCain Completely Misrepresents U.S.-Iraq Basing Deal

My colleague Matt DeLong caught Sen. John McCain’s interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and passed along a quick discussion about the U.S.-Iraq basing deal that calls for a total withdrawal of all U.S. forces by Dec. 31, 2011. Long story short: Either McCain hasn’t read the latest text or More…

A Big-Picture View of the Iraq Basing Deal

Prediction time. When the definitive history of the Bush administration’s prosecution of the Iraq war is written, its attempt to force the Iraqi government to sign a bilateral agreement authorizing an indefinite occupation will stand as its final massive blunder.

Let’s review. In November 2007, George W. Bush and Iraqi More…