SOFA

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the door for the first time Wednesday to the prospect of a U.S. military presence in Iraq after the December 2011 deadline for troop withdrawal set by last year’s bilateral accord — something President Obama appeared to rule out during a joint appearance on Wednesday.

Usually when a journalist says “this is a thoughtful piece of writing” what s/he means is “this is a well-expressed recapitulation of things I already believe,” but, really, in the straightforward sense, this is a thoughtful piece of writing from a Marine stationed near Fallujah, brought to us by Tom Ricks. As it happens, it [...]

Milestones don’t always mark what they should. Tomorrow all these things are true: there are 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq; procedures and circumstances and contingencies pertain whereby urban security will still be a U.S. mission; there is a U.S. combat mission, by binding diplomatic accord, for an additional 13 months; another year will pass after [...]

Although Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, says it’s already happened, as of Wednesday, U.S. combat forces will officially be out of Iraqi towns and cities. There’s going to be a limited number of U.S. forces allowed into the cities for training, equipping and advisory missions, in accordance with last year’s Status [...]

Yesterday’s Pentagon briefing featured a telling exchange about Iraq between a reporter (whom I think was McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef) and  spokesman Geoff Morrell. If the United States is on pace to withdraw from Iraq, the reporter wanted to know, wasn’t the United States declaring victory? Morrell came up with a couple of unsatisfying evasions — [...]

We know what John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security thinks about the future of the U.S.-Iraq relationship. What does Samir Sumaida’ie, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, think the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people want that relationship to be?
He’s “fairly optimistic” about the future of Iraq. “The price has [...]

Alissa J. Rubin has a great story in The New York Times today about a crucial issue in Iraq (which some wags are starting to call the “Forgotten War”): an upcoming referendum that, if passed, would compel the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq within a year, well ahead of the end-of-2011 timetable [...]

Another year, another position paper from the Center for a New American Security on Iraq. The previous bunch of CNAS Iraq position papers were authored by Michele Flournoy, now the undersecretary of defense for policy; Jim Miller, now the principle deputy undersecretary of defense for policy; Colin Kahl, now the deputy assistant secretary of defense [...]

Strange as it sounds, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was a strong proponent of President Obama’s decision to reverse course and argue in court that photographs depicting torture of Iraqis by U.S. troops ought to be kept private, according to McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef:
The official said Maliki warned that releasing the photos would lead to more [...]

The perils of basing your budget on oil revenue: the Iraqi government is practically hemorrhaging money thanks to falling oil prices, and that’s causing a drastic reduction in defense-related jobs and purchases, according to The Washington Post’s Ernesto Londono. The U.S. general in charge of mentoring Iraqi security forces observes that the shortfall will compel [...]