Florida Iraq War veteran Allen West (R), who is running against Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), called Obama’s handling of the situation “immature.” He said, “I really do think it’s a very tragic thing that Gen. McChrystal was released. When I go back in history and look at some of the confrontations between American generals and American presidents, this is a very minor thing.” West, whom Sarah Palin endorsed as an “American hero” on her Facebook page, had a tenure in Iraq that wasn’t without its own share of drama.

Meanwhile, former Colorado Lt. Governor Jane Norton, who is running for the Senate seat currently held by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), used the occasion to take a few swipes at President Obama’s foreign policy in a press release:

Major strategic grievances shouldn’t be aired in Rolling Stone, but General McChrystal was dead right on one critical and alarming point: the Obama Administration’s foreign policy drips of inconsistency, timidity, and lack of a will to win. The Obama Administration is committed to a withdrawal date, not to victory. General Petraeus was an unquestionably shrewd choice, and the fate of the war in Afghanistan and the broader War on Terror hangs on whether he can convince the White House to show real resolve and steel in prosecuting this fight. Let’s hope this move sharpens the White House’s focus on implementing a strategy to win.

The response from Republicans in Congress couldn’t be more different. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) — who earlier justified McChrystal’s comments in Rolling Stone by saying the general must be “frustrated” with Obama — supported the president’s decision and said it was “his alone.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on “Good Morning America” Thursday, “It’s completely understandable why the president made the decision that he did, based on the civilian-military relationship that goes a long way back.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said, “There are lines you cannot cross in the military. … David Petraeus is our best hope.”

Gen. Petraeus is expected to win easy Senate confirmation next week for his new role as top commander in Afghanistan.

A guard tower at the Guantanamo detention center. (defenselink.mil)

It was a blind quote hitting the civil-libertarian solar plexus. Bad enough that, as ProPublica’s Dafna Linzer and The Washington Post’s Peter Finn reported late on Friday afternoon, the Obama administration was readying an executive order for a system for preventive detention in terrorism cases. President Obama himself had indicated in a May speech at the National Archives that he wanted to seek legislation toward the same idea. But an administration official told the reporters that those same opponents of preventive detention had given the president cover to pursue it: “Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order.”

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

As it happens, White House officials sought to walk the story back, with officials saying that the administration wasn’t drafting an executive order and was unlikely to issue one, as press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday. But representatives of civil liberties groups were still stunned to see the quote. At a meeting with the administration’s task force on detentions policy earlier this month, most of the major civil liberties groups explicitly urged the administration to instead either charge Guantanamo Bay detainees and future terrorism captives with crimes in federal court or release them. Now, with the prospect of a new administration creating a regimen for holding detainees for an unbounded period without facing charges — a major target for civil libertarian fights with the Bush administration — on the horizon, several groups that hailed Obama’s election are vowing to fight the proposal.

“Any continued policies of prolonged detention without trial of Guantanamo detainees simply fails to turn the page on the counterproductive policy of the Bush administration,” said Human Rights First’s Devon Chaffee, who attended the meeting with the task force. “We oppose any prolonged detention without trial beyond what is already authorized under the laws of war. If an individual committed acts of terrorism, they should be tried in our regular federal courts.”

On June 9, a task force empanelled by Obama’s January 22 executive order to recommend changes to U.S. detention policy for “violent extremists” invited civil liberties groups to the Justice Department for a meeting led by Army Col. Mark Martins, a former legal adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq. Representatives of Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, Human Rights First, New York University’s Brennan Center, the Constitution Project, Amnesty International, the Center for National Security Studies, the Open Society Institute and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers spent about two hours making a case against preventive detention, as well as offering their perspectives on military commissions, the repatriation of Guantananamo detainees, and the detention facility at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Field.

According to attendees, the meeting was respectful and solicitous. Task force members opted to listen to civil libertarian concerns far more than they chose to present their own views, offering the occasional hypothetical example to test the contention that federal civilian courts would be adequate to handle terrorism cases. “They were very thoughtful, engaging, reflective and genuinely interested in our input,” said one participant who declined to be identified. “I didn’t get the sense that they were just rubber-stamping, so they could say they met with human-rights groups.”

The meeting was designed to be a forum for a subsection of the task force to hear from the civil liberties organizations that have been distressed by emerging administration perspectives on detention since March, when the Justice Department filed a brief in federal court claiming authority to detain terrorism captives outside of the criminal justice system. “A very strong message given at that meeting was that the vast majority of the civil-liberties community oppose any form of prolonged preventive detention without trial,” said Chaffee. “Significant emphasis was placed on the ability of federal civilian courts to handle complex terrorism cases.”

Numerous attendees said that they opposed any vehicle, either legislation or an executive order, to produce an indefinite-detention system. Some made the additional point that seeking legislation for a preventive detention strategy would allow a Congress that shows relatively little concern for civil liberties to expand the parameters of any administration approach to detention in unpredictable ways. “Given the political situation in Congress, things could get even worse, and the preventive detention bill could be even broader and more problematic than what the president suggested in the National Archives speech,” said a different participant in the meeting who also declined to be identified. The administration official quoted by Linzer and Finn “somehow misinterpreted” the message, this participant added, since support for a executive order on preventive detention was “not at all what was conveyed by anyone.”

Whether or not an executive order on preventive detention is forthcoming, Obama indicated in his May speech at the National Archives that he embraces the logic of some form of detention for terrorism detainees outside the federal civilian courts, speaking of “detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.” The same speech pledged to “work with Congress” to come up with a legal regime for detention, though the president did not explicitly indicate if such a system would include future alleged-terrorist captives in addition to Guantanamo detainees.

Accordingly, Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that he was disinterested in the “continuing debate over whether preventive detention is a good idea or a bad one,” since “the only serious question is what the legal framework for detention will be, not whether it will happen.”

To that end, Wittes released a proposal on Friday for legislation on non-criminal terrorism detention that seeks to give the administration latitude to detain suspected terrorists beyond the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq but also impose judicial and congressional oversight on a process that the Bush administration left virtually unbounded, and which the Supreme Court subsequently restrained. His proposal, co-authored with Colleen A. Peppard, creates a 14-day period of detention without charge that could be expanded on a repeatable six-month basis by the federal District Court for the District of Columbia and defines the class of potential detainees in terms of actions they take “working on behalf of the enemy” as defined by acts of Congress.

Wittes added that he had discussed his ideas for preventive detention with the administration task force but declined to elaborate.

Administration officials who would not speak for attribution cautioned that much remained undecided by the administration beyond what Obama had stated publicly, as debate remains ongoing, both within the task force and within the administration more broadly. One knowledgeable source pointed to career government attorneys across the Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security Departments and the National Security Council who had been working on detainee and interrogation issues for years — officials who had been as critical of Bush administration legal excesses as they are Obama-era enthusiasm for fundamental change — as key figures in determining the nuts and bolts of the internal debate. “All those people, consistently, have been warning that the way we pick these people up can’t be separated from the way we deal with them,” the source said. “Schematically, they’re in the conservative-Democrat camp. You wouldn’t find them fundamentally different than Ike Skelton or Carl Levin,” referring to the chairmen of the House and Senate armed services committees.

Even so, human rights groups are now preparing to oppose any forthcoming legislative proposal or executive order on preventive detention. “We don’t want the administration to seek to legalize a system of preventive detention by executive order or by statute,” said Sharon Bradford Franklin, a senior counsel at the Constitution Project who attended the June 9 meeting.

The Center For Constitutional Rights, one of the few major civil-liberties groups that did not attend the June 9 meeting, “would mobilize to oppose any effort to create a preventive detention scheme,” said spokeswoman Jen Nessel. “Whether it’s in the form of an executive order or legislation, indefinite detention without charge, trial or due process goes against our most fundamental principles of justice and the rule of law.”

Michael Price, the national security coordinator for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and another meeting attendee, said the administration had yet to present a robust case that there was indeed a cohort of detainees who could not be responsibly tried in federal courts, contending that classified information would be adequately protected under statutes like the Classified Information Procedures Act. (Critics contend the act lends too much deference to a defendant.) “An executive order, I think, is dangerous,” Price said. “Congress getting legislation to pass preventive detention is also dangerous, but not any more dangerous than preventive detention itself. But we will oppose either way.”

Price continued, “I don’t think opposition with the administration is necessarily the right way to categorize this, but I think we’d be strongly opposed to the idea of the proposal.”

Cully Stimson, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy in the Bush administration, said he was pleased by both the agitation of the civil-liberties community and the early signals by the Obama administration about preventive detention. “The Obama guys and gals have the facts now — they’ve seen the files, read the cooperation agreements, been read into the programs,” Stimson said. “Even the human-rights advocates who were throwing spitballs at me and other Bush people when I was in [government] who are now on the task force, they clearly are in a better place factually than when they were sitting on the sidelines. Who cares what the ACLU thinks?”

Liza Goitein of the Brennan Center, another June 9 meeting participant, also rejected any preventive detention scheme. But she was heartened that the question appeared not to be settled. “It’s clear that the administration is still struggling on this issue,” Goitein said. “I can see that in the difference between what Obama said in the National Archives speech seeking legislation and then the report of the executive order. It’s safe to say the administration has not come up with a final plan. As long as that’s the case, there’s some hope that there won’t be a preventive detention regime.”

They said Petraeus and senior administration officials believe the Pakistani army, led by Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, is “superior” to the civilian government, led by President Ali Zardari, and could conceivably survive even if Zardari’s government falls to the Taliban.  …

The officials who spoke with Petraeus, however, said he and they believe that even were Zardari’s government to fall, it was still conceivable that Kayani’s army could maintain control over the nuclear arsenal.

That is because the Pakistani arsenal is set up in such a way — with the weapons stockpile and activation mechanisms separated — so as to prevent easy access by invaders. Moreover, the Taliban is not believed at present to possess the sophisticated technical expertise necessary to exercise full “command and control” over a nuclear arsenal, and would probably require weeks if not months to develop it.

It would be naive to think that the Pakistani military, which ruled Pakistan for the past ten years until Pervez Musharraf resigned from the Army in November 2007 and formally relinquished power last August, doesn’t believe it could do a better job of governing than Asif Ali Zardari. And it would also be naive to think that the Obama administration is closed off to the prospect, whatever it might say about democracy. Andrew Exum wonders why the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has a “weird man crush” on Kayani. He might merely be prepared to bet on what he considers the stronger horse — not a strong horse, as the Pakistani army has been repeatedly beaten by the Pakistani Taliban and its allies, but a stronger one. It might also explain why Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy objects to making aid to Pakistan receivable only to “civilian authorities of a government of Pakistan constituted through a free and fair election,” among other provisions of conditionalized funding.

Next week representatives of the Pakistani government will be in Washington for the next round of trilateral talks with the Obama administration and the Afghan government. After this report, and with the Pakistani Taliban approaching the gates of Islamabad, it’ll seem like whistling past the Kayani government’s graveyard.

–

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“This afternoon, I met with our Ambassador to Iraq, the commander in Iraq, and the overall theater commander in the region in order to get a full update on the situation in Iraq. Key members of my cabinet and senior national security officials also participated in this meeting.

“The meeting was productive and I very much appreciated receiving assessments from these experienced and dedicated individuals. During the discussion, I asked the military leadership to engage in additional planning necessary to execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq.

“In the coming days and weeks, I will also visit the Department of Defense to consult with the Joint Chiefs on these issues, and we will undertake a full review of the situation in Afghanistan in order to develop a comprehensive policy for the entire region.”

The Pentagon hopes to deploy two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan by next summer, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday, accelerating the shift of resources from Iraq.

Which units, precisely, haven’t been decided yet, but Dreazen reports that one of them may be “diverted from Iraq.” With the new brigade combat team that’s going to be positioned (mostly) in the Logar-Wardak area, the additional troop component now stands at three brigades by (maybe) the summer, one shy of the four that Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has requested.

So the U.S. will get three new brigades for Afghanistan. The Marine Corps wants to go all-in. But what the U.S. still doesn’t have is a clear achievable strategy, as Jack Murtha pointed out yesterday. There’s a strategy review being conducted by Gen. David Petraeus. Inevitably there’ll be a review conducted by the Obama administration once it takes office. But unless those reviews address the hard questions — what are the right goals for the U.S. in Afghanistan? What’s it going to take to achieve them? What’s a reasonable and what’s an unreasonable cost for success? — all that Afghanistan is going to bring the U.S. is more suffering. Jim Jones, the incoming national security adviser, has given indications that he agrees. But we’ll have to wait and see.

President-elect Barack Obama (WDCpix)

During his July trip to Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama met with a man who represents both an opportunity and an obstacle to his presidency: Army Gen. David H. Petraeus. Petraeus, a hero to many Americans for his management of the war in Iraq, argued in a private briefing that military commanders should be given wide latitude in handing the future course of the war — though Obama was running for president on a platform calling for a withdrawal of combat troops in 16 months.

The meeting offered a test for a relationship that might help define Obama’s term in office. Though he’s talked about governing in a bipartisan fashion, Obama ran for office as a progressive opposed to the Iraq war. The uniformed military, typically wary of liberals in general, is unsure what to think about Obama — and the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, stumbled early in his relationship with the military.

Yet Obama struck a balance in the Petraeus meeting. “If I were in his shoes, I’d probably feel the same way” about preserving flexibility for military operations, Obama said of Petraeus after the meeting ended. “But my job as a candidate for president and a potential commander in chief extends beyond Iraq.”

To Peter Feaver, one of the leading scholars of civil-military relations, that comment was auspicious. “Obama had it pitch-perfect,” said Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University and a national-security staffer for both Clinton and George W. Bush. “Obama was right to signal to the military, ‘I want your military advice, and I will factor it into my strategic decisions, where military advice is one of my concerns.’”

Whether a Commander-in-Chief Obama can continue the tone that Candidate Obama sounded in July remains to be seen. According to interviews with active and retired military officers, Obama and the military can have a productive relationship, provided that Obama operates along some simple principles. Consult, don’t steamroll — and don’t capitulate. Be honest about disagreements, and emphasize areas of agreement. Make Petraeus a partner, not an adversary.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Similarly, the uniformed military will have to keep certain principles in mind as well. There’s only one commander in chief, and you’re not him. Don’t substitute military judgment for strategic judgment.

Obama enters office without some of the impediments to healthy civil-military relations that hindered Clinton. Clinton, a baby boomer, had to deal with the legacy of not serving in Vietnam, while Obama, born in 1961, doesn’t have the baggage of the Vietnam era weighing him down. “He didn’t serve, but he didn’t serve with distinction,” said Feaver, laughing.

Similarly damaging to Clinton was his early misstep with gays in the military. During Clinton’s transition from candidate to president, he seemed to suggest lifting the ban on gays serving openly, an implication seized on by conservatives and met with furor from the armed services. His response was to back down — which set a tone to the military that an uncertain Clinton could be rolled.

Defense Dept. officials today still believe Clinton’s early capitulation set a troublesome precedent. “If Clinton has simply ordered the military to lift the ban on gays in the military — as Truman did with racial integration against near universal opposition,” said one Pentagon official who requested anonymity, “he would have been much better off in dealing with the military for the rest of his administration. There would have been a big fuss, but they would have respected him more.”

The lesson for Obama, this official continued, is “not to get rolled or railroaded by the top brass, as Clinton and his civilian team were by Colin Powell,” who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time. “Obama and his team need to be respectful and solicitous of senior military advice, but leave no doubt about who is in charge.”

Yet Obama doesn’t wish merely not to be railroaded. Much as with the Petraeus meeting in July, Obama’s team has signaled an openness to the military since coming to Washington. One of Obama’s first foreign-policy aides in the Senate, Mark Lippert, deployed to Iraq in 2007 as a Naval reservist. Several of his principle advisers today command widespread Pentagon respect.

Former Sen. Sam Nunn, who served as a longtime chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and is now an influential military reformer, is advising Obama’s Pentagon transition. Michele Flournoy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the second Clinton term and prominent authority on counterinsurgency, is helping run Obama’s Pentagon headhunting process. Most important, Obama’s aides have flirted in the past week with asking Bob Gates, the current defense secretary, to stay on for an extra year.

In addition to benefiting from succeeding a widely-disliked defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, Gates’s brief tenure at Defense has earned plaudits from around the military, especially as he worked closely with Petraeus in implementing the troop surge in Iraq last year.

“Keeping Gates is a huge gesture to the military,” said Ian Moss, a Marine corporal who recently left active duty. “Simply put, from my conversations with military personnel, there is much respect for Gates. By retaining Gates, Obama instantly communicates to military personnel that he values their assessment of Gates.”

Feaver said the Gates trial balloon indicated that Obama doesn’t intend to govern in an “Anything But Bush” manner — rigidly rejecting every aspect of the Bush legacy as a matter of principle. “The very fact that they want send that signal is a positive from the point of view of civil-military relations,” he said. “If it’s not a trial balloon, and they actually do it, it would further cement an emerging view of Obama as a pragmatist.”

One early decision that many in the military likely look to is whether Obama holds to his position on withdrawing from Iraq according to a fixed timetable. As with the country as a whole, there is no unanimity of opinion on Iraq within the military. But at the very least, the war is more personal to the military than it is to the civilian population. Many view this withdrawal with anxiety.

Feaver said it would be useful for Obama to blur the difference between his withdrawal proposals and Petraeus’ plan to shift the U.S. footprint to “strategic overwatch” functions, like training Iraqi troops — though Petraeus’ plan has no timetable associated with it.

“If what he’s describing is a target, a goal that’s desirable, that he’ll shoot for, and work to make conditions on the ground consistent with… then that’s not really much of a problem,” Feaver said. But if, on the other hand, Obama really does intend to withdraw two combat brigades every month — as he indicated during the Democratic presidential primaries, “then that would spark a civil-military — I won’t say crisis, but a challenge to manage,” Feaver pointed out.

Some members of the military community are more sanguine. Several say that if they disagree with the decision, they respect Obama’s authority to make it.

“In the end, we are not self-employed. And after the military leadership provides its best military advice, it is up to the policy-makers to make the decision and for the military to execute those decisions,” said a senior Army officer recently back from Iraq, who requested anonymity because he is still on active duty. “Now, if those in the military do not like the decision, they have two choices. One, salute smartly and execute the missions given them to the best of their ability. Or, the other, leave the military if they do not feel they can faithfully execute their missions. That is one way the military does get to vote in an all-volunteer force.”

Moss agreed. “The military will just follow the order,” he said. “The great majority of Americans want U.S. forces out of Iraq. This is part of the reason Obama was sent to the White House.”

Much as with Obama’s pick for secretary of defense, many in the military will watch how Obama and Petraeus interact as a barometer for civil-military harmony. To some degree, there could be an invisibility to the relationship — as the senior Army officer said, “most will not know about or see” what the president says to his Central Command chief — but it could still be closely scrutinized.

Not everyone is convinced that there will be tension between Obama and Petraeus. “I am certain Gen. Petraeus will fulfill the mission as tasked by the [secretary of defense] and the [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] without question,” said Malcolm Nance, a former instructor of Navy special forces who has spent extensive periods in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I am certain as a combat officer of great intellect, a superlative battle staff and open mindedness, his real mission is singular: break Al Qaeda and kill the Al Qaeda senior leadership. He did it in Iraq and he intends to do it in Afghanistan if given the chance.

“There will be no MacArthurs here,” Nance continued, referring to the legendary Army general whom President Harry S Truman fired for insubordination during the Korean War. And for their part, Nance predicted, “the phrase ‘pleasantly surprised’ should come to the lips of all military personnel who meet with Obama,” judging from the inclusiveness Obama showed in his campaign.

Robert Mackey, a retired Army officer, said that both Petraeus and the new Iraq commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, can work with Obama despite disagreements on Iraq. “I think that both are pretty good thinkers, more than able to understand that change is going to occur and that their job is to complete whatever mission [Obama] orders them to do,” Mackey said. “They don’t have to be Obama’s buddies to do the job. In fact, that would most likely reflect poorly on the administration within the military.”

Indeed, the differences between Obama and Petraeus or Odierno on Iraq might turn out to be healthy for civilian-military relations. Judging from how the July meeting with Petraeus in Baghdad went, “Obama should be in good shape,” said the Pentagon official. “It will be a refreshing change from recent years, when civilian political leaders have shirked off tough questions about — and responsibility for — their war policies by claiming, in effect, that they’re just taking directions from the commanders on the ground, in effect, hiding behind the skirts of the military.”

Moss agreed. Institutional pushback is “not a bad thing” necessarily, he said. “If anything, the major lesson from the past decade should be that the solutions to the challenges we face must be approached from multiple angles, and that is what Obama has signaled as his intention.”

Like Feaver, the anonymous senior Army officer expected Obama to make Petraeus a partner on Iraq and other issues. “Once President-elect Obama is in office,” the officer said, “he can very easily shift his view based on advice he has received, as well as the situation on the ground at the time, since he has left himself an out or two over time. It would be surprising to see him go completely against Gen. Petraeus, since I would think [Obama] would rather have him in uniform than out — where he would then be free to provide commentary on the decisions that have been made.”

Another challenge for Obama, beyond Petraeus and Iraq, would be senior officers’ desire “to get back to preparing –and procuring — for the big, conventional Russia-China scenario the U.S. military institutionally prefers,” the anonymous Pentagon official said. But the current financial crisis and massive budget deficits create their own pressures on defense spending.

According to this source, who requested anonymity, Petraeus had wanted to go to Syria while still commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to discuss what could be done cooperatively to stanch the flow of foreign fighters entering Iraq from the Syrian border. He sent his request up the chain of command — meaning it would have gone first to the office of Gen. Martin Dempsey or Adm. Fox Fallon at Central Command, depending on when the request was made, which I don’t know, and then to Defense Sec. Robert Gates — and asked when an appropriate time to go to Syria might be.

The answer he got was “Not Yet,” not “No.” And it remains as a standing request, so Petraeus is still waiting to hear.

My source added that whoever leaked the story to ABC probably wasn’t familiar with Petraeus’ thinking, as the general doesn’t intend to go to Damascus for his first trip as Central Command chief.

What’s this all mean? The context is important for its own sake, to be sure. It’s reassuring to know that the Bush administration didn’t veto the trip outright, though it’s unclear whether “Not Yet” is just an easier way, bureaucratically, of saying “No.”

But it doesn’t change the basic overview that it’s preferable to talk to one’s adversaries, to see if there’s a productive way forward, notwithstanding the seemingly overblown claim in the ABC story that Petraeus wanted to cleave Syria from the Iranian sphere of influence.

I’ll leave it to readers to judge whether that overview is closer to Obama’s foreign policy or Sen. John McCain’s.

According to ABC, the incoming Centcom commander — who takes over at 10 a.m. today, as a matter of fact — wanted to make a visit to the Syrian government. Of course, the Bush administration considers Bashar al-Assad a junior-varsity member of the Axis of Evil. I don’t think we’ve had ambassadorial-level relations since 2005, when Bush recalled Amb. Margaret Scobey to protest Syria’s assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Yet Petraeus doesn’t think it’s crazy to discuss one’s problems with foreign leaders.

Petraeus proposed visiting Syria shortly after taking over as the top U.S. commander for the Middle East.

The idea was swiftly rejected by Bush administration officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon.

According to ABC, Petraeus believes the Syrians can be wooed away from the Iranian sphere of influence, which would give Washington far more leverage in dealing with Iran.

Instead, the Bush administration chose to keep relations frosty and to assassinate an al-Qaeda in Iraq leader across the border in Syria  –  an act that the Syrians understandably find to be an affront. The administration coupled this with a “warning” to the Syrians about “clean[ing] up the global threat that is in your back yard,” in the words of one senior official.

Now, it may be that killing Abu Ghadiya was the right thing to do. If so, the more productive course might have been for Petraeus, or another U.S. emissary, to establish some path of outreach to smooth over rough U.S.-Syrian patches like this one.

The leak of this ABC story is important, too. This is just an inference, but the fact that such a move would become public on the eve of the election seems like a signal from Petraeus to the likely next commander-in-chief that the two of them can do business.

Having told the reader what his intent was, Rosen described the Taliban as “religious students who knew little about the rest of the world and cared only about liberating their country from oppressive warlords.” Rosen concluded his piece by declaring that the war was lost –- unless we negotiated an ending with the Taliban.

Yes, only simpletons could believe that negotiating with the Taliban offers more hope than an open-ended conflict. Such simpletons include Hamid Karzai, David Petraeus, the Pakistani government and, increasingly, the Pentagon.

Good thing we have West to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Yesterday we saw John McCain severely misrepresent what the impending U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) says, incorrectly insisting that its date-certain deadlines for U.S. troop withdrawals are based on “conditions” on the ground. Here Klein asks Obama to revisit his 2007 questions to Gen. David Petraeus about whether conditions in Iraq are good enough to merit withdrawal. His answer appears to entail something big:

[OBAMA]  I don’t think it’s quite good enough yet because I think we have to do a little more training. We’ve got to build up the logistical capacity. I think the possibilities of ethnic strife breaking out again are still present, precisely because the political system has not stabilized itself yet. But I do believe that we are at a point now where we can start drawing down troops. I think we can time a process where the drawing down of troops [IS] parallel to building up the capacity in Iraq and the SOFA agreement that…was just put forward I think reflects that reality.

That sounds like he’s on board with the 2011 deadline for total withdrawal. Obama’s campaign proposal is, of course, to withdraw combat forces by mid-2010. He’s long advocated a residual force for the purposes of (mostly) training the Iraqi security forces. But if he’s on board with the SOFA, then we’re out — all out, adviser/trainer forces and everything — by Dec. 31, 2011. There’s a provision in Article 25 section 5 of the SOFA allowing the Iraqi government “to ask the U.S. government to keep specific forces for the purposes of training and support of the Iraqi security forces” if 2011 is too soon to stop the training mission, but that would require another “special agreement” negotiation with the Iraqis on a new deadline. If Obama is, in fact,  embracing the SOFA, then for the first time from him we’d get a deadline for complete, not partial, withdrawal from Iraq.