@cicerone imposter,
The US-Iraqi "status of forces" agreement has been months in the making, and today [Thursday] we are told that it's "almost" ready " but not quite. So what's the problem? Well, there are a few bones of contention between the "liberators" and the "liberated," the first being how long US forces will stay, and the second being the terms under which they will essentially continue their occupation. What this increasingly contentious issue between the Americans and the Iraqis reveals and underscores is just how far down the road to empire the US has traveled.
What is becoming readily apparent, even to this administration, is that the Americans are no longer wanted by any of the Iraqi factions: not the Sunnis, who hated us from the beginning, not the Shi'ites, who soon learned to hate us, and not even the Kurds, formerly our trusted compradors in the region and now sullenly resentful at having had their anti-Turkish campaign reined in by a joint effort of US and Iraqi forces.
President Bush has long disdained the very idea of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops, but last month had the rug pulled out from under him " and John McCain " when Barack Obama went to Iraq and was greeted by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who promptly endorsed Obama's call for a definitive timetable. The status of forces agreement has been demoted to the level of a "memorandum of understanding," so as not to require a vote by the US Congress, nevertheless it cannot avoid a vote in the Iraqi Parliament. That's what they mean by "exporting" democracy: It's the Iraqis who do the voting, while we just get to foot the bill.
http://antiwar.com/justin/
