White House Withdrawl From Iraq Plan?
Gates claim the White House is working on a withdrawl plan. Do you think this is true?
NPR-Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that a top Pentagon official did not intend to impugn her patriotism by suggesting her questions about U.S. planning in Iraq boosts enemy propaganda.
…..The letter also contains the most explicit admission to date that the Pentagon is in fact planning for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces, with Gates telling Clinton: “You may rest assured that such planning is indeed taking place with my active involvement…..”
Late Thursday, lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee were told they would get the briefing Clinton had been seeking for months on the issue of troop withdrawal.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
FYI
Iraqi lawmakers take their time
Even with U.S. pressure to pass key legislation, there is a distinct lack of urgency.
LA TIMES-BAGHDAD — Missing from Thursday’s session of the Iraqi parliament were about half of the members, including the speaker, the former speaker and two former prime ministers.
Also missing: a sense of urgency.
American officials have been pressing Iraqi leaders to prove their commitment to ending sectarian strife by enacting landmark legislation before mid-September, when the Bush administration is to present its next report on Iraq to Congress.
But even as parliament’s monthlong August break approaches, key issues aren’t being discussed. Quorums are marginal, or fleeting.
Despite the high stakes here, the Iraqi parliament appears to be deliberating at a pace to rival plodding legislative bodies around the world.
Thursday’s session, the 50th of the year, convened half an hour late.
A bell rang in the Convention Center in the fortified Green Zone reminding members to take their seats and raise their hands for roll call (the electronic system is broken). It showed 145 in attendance. That dropped to 137 as some members walked out after the first vote. The speaker on occasion has dismissed parliament for falling below the quorum of 100 legislators, but on Thursday, they proceeded. The opening Muslim prayer and 275-name roll call took half an hour, a quarter of the time, in what turned out to be a roughly two-hour session.
Those present circulated an agenda of 11 items, none related to the legislation Washington has been demanding, including laws concerning oil investment and revenue-sharing between regions, reintegrating former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime into government, disarming militias and holding provincial elections. Some members say the modest agendas at recent meetings are a symptom of parliament’s inability to overcome sectarian divisions and cobble together the two-thirds majority needed to pass major legislation.
“There’s a deficit in our performance, both in quantity and quality, especially when it comes to [passing] legislation. The fact of the matter is our will is big, but our action is too little,” said Saleem Abdullah, a member of the Sunni Tawafiq parliamentary bloc who missed Thursday’s session due to other official business. “It will affect the [American] view of the success of the political process in Iraq.
“It will show there haven’t been any achievements in the political process.”
The parliament is under pressure from Washington and from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to work through the rest of the summer. But after sacrificing one month of vacation in July, and shifting from three- to six-day workweeks, many are unwilling to give up their August break.
“The prime minister cannot simply will something to be done — each bloc has its views and the prime minister has enormous challenges,” a senior U.S. Embassy officer said Thursday. “He is frustrated, as are we.”
Maliki’s spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, blamed legislative delays on tension between political blocs in parliament and the Cabinet. Legislators aligned with the largest Sunni bloc on Wednesday suspended its participation in the Cabinet, stalling a portion of the oil legislation, he said.
Still, President Bush remained upbeat Thursday about Iraqi lawmakers’ efforts.
They have “passed quite a few pieces of legislation and they’re trying to work through their differences,” Bush said in Philadelphia. “Sometimes legislative bodies aren’t real smooth in getting out a piece of legislation in a timely fashion, as some of you might recognize, but nevertheless, they’re working hard learning what it means to have a parliament that functions.”
Thursday’s session began in earnest with members congratulating the Iraqi soccer team on its victory Wednesday over South Korea in the semifinals of the Asian Cup. One member mocked South Korea as a “paper tiger.” Another chided him, saying sports should unite not divide countries. That ate up about 10 minutes. Then the sports committee chairman took the podium and chastised the lawmakers.
“Our team promised us they would win. Where are the politicians who promised us electricity and cold water?” said Hassan Othman.
No one responded.
Instead, two lawmakers began complaining about U.S. military operations this week in the west Baghdad neighborhood of Amil and in Husseiniya, about 20 miles north of the capital, where witnesses said an American airstrike left 18 dead.
A member of the Sunni Tawafiq political bloc proposed adding an item to the agenda: negotiating cellphone contracts for overseas companies in Iraq. Members voted to consider the contracts at a later session.
Then they moved on to the next item: a motion of no confidence in ethics commission chairman Radhi Radhi, who many say is being targeted because of his pursuit of corrupt officials. It was the fifth time it had been listed on the agenda, and on Thursday, members again postponed a vote.
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish independent, said parliament’s unwillingness to tackle such controversial issues has lead many members to stay home in silent protest. Some lawmakers may also be worried about their safety, after a bombing in the parliament cafeteria in April killed Mohammed Awad and injured at least 22.
“Some have not come since the first session,” Othman said Thursday at the Convention Center, which houses the parliament. “The things discussed are not serious, so people think ‘Why should we come?’ ”
Parliament members, who receive a $65,000 annual salary and $8,300 a month for up to 20 bodyguards, are fined about $415 a day for being absent.
Some lawmakers have proposed legislation to force political blocs to send substitutes for members who don’t attend. Parliament was supposed to consider the issue Thursday, but postponed the discussion.
Samya Aziz Mohammed spent the end of Thursday’s session discussing wrongs committed against fellow Failis, Shiite Kurds in Baghdad and Diyala persecuted under Hussein’s regime. By 2 p.m., many members had left to talk to Arabic-language TV stations or returned to their committee offices.
“Everyone says this is an important issue, why don’t you discuss it,” Muhammad said to the half-empty room. “Now the parliament is not listening to me.”
Outside, Osama Nujaifi, a secular Shiite lawmaker, told TV reporters that he opposed the oil legislation and the U.S. insistence on setting parliament’s agenda. Even if parliament eventually passes the benchmark legislation, it won’t signal progress, Nujaifi said. It will simply show Washington’s ability to railroad measures through a legislature full of polarized politicians.
“We are in need of a new parliament because this parliament is not going to solve Iraq’s problems,” Nujaifi said, calling for U.S.-style elections in which voters choose candidates instead of political slates that win a number of seats.
Just as Nujaifi finished speaking at 2:20 p.m. and parliament was about to move to agenda item No. 8 — a vote on banning chemical weapons — the acting speaker, First Deputy Speaker Khalid Atiya, decided to adjourn until Saturday afternoon, just three days before the August break is due to begin.
No votes had been taken, no legislation passed.
Moments later, Othman, the Kurdish lawmaker, could be found pacing downstairs in the Convention Center lobby.
Although he is frustrated with the lack of progress in parliament, he said, U.S. pressure would not make Iraqi lawmakers move any faster. Real action on benchmark legislation won’t come until September, at the earliest, he predicted, and probably would be driven by deals hashed out in private by Cabinet and party bloc leaders, not legislators resistant to change.
“The Americans don’t understand,” he said. “The more they insist, the more there will be opposition and we will never pass it.”
July 27th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
FYI
Bush Sets the Table for September: Who You Gonna Believe, Petraeus or Your Own Eyes?
AH-In preparing us for Gen. David Petraeus’ inevitable glass-half-full September assessment, the administration has been putting a Bushian spin on the classic Marx Brothers line “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
For Bush and his minions, the question to the American people has become: Who you gonna believe, Petraeus or the facts — and the bodies piling up — on the ground?
Over the last four years, Bush has told us again and again and again that he believes “strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn’t be telling generals how to do their job” — and then has done precisely that. It would be comical — if the consequences weren’t so tragic.
And he’s doing it again, urging us to trust the experts come September. “Look, you want politicians making those decisions, or do you want commanders on the ground making the decisions?… I would trust David Petraeus to make an assessment and a recommendation a lot better than people in the United States Congress.”
But the backyard of the White House is littered with the dead careers of military experts the president refused to listen to, starting with Gen. Shinseki, who warned that we were heading into Iraq with too few boots on the ground, and continuing through Gen. Casey, who had the full trust of the president — until he became an advocate of withdrawal and a naysayer of the surge.
“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win, not how we’re going to leave,” the president told his military experts on the cusp of announcing his troop escalation strategy in January — and on the cusp of getting rid of Gen. Casey and his inconvenient expert opinions.
Bush is so gung-ho about listening to Gen. Petraeus not because he is an expert but because he is an expert who agrees with Bush.
Indeed, he is an expert who agrees with Bush even though it means disregarding his own expertise — ie the Army’s newly-revised counter-insurgency field manual which he co-authored and, according to which, far more troops are needed for the surge to succeed than he’s been given.
Yet he is shamefully going along with the White House, claiming that he can make the surge work with the inadequate resources at his disposal. And if he stops going along, there is, in the Bush career burial yard, a hole in the ground with his name on it.
I’m sorry, but if that’s the kind of gun-to-the-head expertise the president wants us to put our trust in, I’d rather believe my own eyes. That’s something very important to keep in mind during through the dog days of summer as Bush sets the table for September.