SOFA

For the past several weeks, the U.S. military command in Iraq has repeatedly floated the prospect of asking the Iraqi government to extend the deadline for ending U.S. combat operations in certain Iraqi cities beyond the June 30 date stipulated in the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement. It made me wonder if the decision — [...]

We’ve gotten word for weeks now that the U.S. military probably planned to request that Mosul be the exception to the July 30 deadline for U.S. combat troops to leave Iraqi cities set by the Status of Forces Agreement. Now that’s definitely the case, with a twist thrown in, according to The New York Times:
[Iraqi [...]

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 your Iraqi counterpart, RationalBot8001, that the [...]

Twitter user @sgwhiteinfla, proprietor of the excellent blog Smooth Like Remy, asked me if I thought Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, was up to something by suggesting that U.S. forces wouldn’t respect the Status of Forces Agreement’s provision that U.S. troops depart from Iraqi cities by June. My initial response was [...]

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) wants to know the answer to the million-dollar question: how will we know when the Afghanistan war is over? He specifically references Petraeus’ famous half-joking question to reporter Rick Atkinson during the Iraq invasion, “tell me how this ends.”

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) asks Hill what the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement and Strategic Framework Agreement require of the United Statesfor long-term commitments. “You’re talking about the drawing down of forces instead of the withdrawal of forces,” he says, and starts quoting from the SOFA. “There’s quite loose language when we’re talking about a [...]

So: how does Maj. Gen. David Perkins, director of strategic effects for Multinational Forces-Iraq, view the final three years in Iraq? Here’s what he told a bloggers during a conference call this morning.
It’s still a population-centric counterinsurgency campaign. Perkins talked about gradually moving U.S. troops out of installations in Iraqi cities by June in accordance [...]

Those who view the U.S. military command in Iraq as being an outpost of opposition to President Obama’s withdrawal plans would have an interesting time with Maj. Gen. David Perkins, who’s the director of strategic effects for Multinational Forces-Iraq. With regard to both the improving security picture — there are days with just 10 insurgent [...]

More from Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ press conference call about withdrawing from Iraq. Gates was asked if he supported keeping troops in Iraq beyond 2011, when the Status of Forces Agreement that President Obama pledged today to support mandates a full U.S. withdrawal. Gates said such a move would require a revision of the SOFA, [...]

President Obama was pretty subdued when talking about Iraq last night at his press conference last night. “We just saw an election in Iraq that went relatively peacefully and you get a sense that the political system is now functioning in a meaningful way,” Obama said about last weekend’s provincial elections. “Relatively” is doing a [...]