Posted on 09/15/2008 8:21:05 AM PDT by red irish
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Monday, September 15, 2008 Browse > Home / Barack Obama, News, Todays News, lies / Obama Tried To Stall Iraq Withdrawal Obama Tried To Stall Iraq Withdrawal
September 15, 2008
By Amir Taheri
NY POST - While campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."
"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.
Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.
While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.
Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.
Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.
By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.
Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.
Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.
According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.
Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.
Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.
Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."
Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."
Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.
Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.
Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.
Source: New York Post
Absolutely! If proven true, this presidential race is over. Obama only needs to deny it, and his friends in the media will happily make the issue go away....
SEPTEMBER SURPRISE!
Welcome to the party!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2082538/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2082672/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2082701/posts
All this means the story has legs ;-)
October Surprise 2 weeks early.
Put him on the defensive...how he explains this (plausibly) is next to impossible.
Playing a political stunt/game with the lives of our soldiers...oye veh..
McCain supporters can't even use the "H" word (Hussein),,,
while Hussein is overseas trying to delay the return home of troops for his own political advantage!!
It doesn't get any more ugly, ruthless or treasonous than that!!!
Imagine what the Press would do if McCAIN DID THAT!
Oh my! Surely one of the good guys (like Hannity) will jump on this. If it’s proven true, isn’t it illegal? Can’t this be a death sentence (figuratively speaking) for Obama?
No preconditions for our enemies. Preconditions for our allies. This will make the world respect us.
BE CAREFUL ON THIS ONE:
Iraq has motive to discredit Obama as they need McCain to win in order to not be “left” twisting in the wind as they will be if the democrats win. There is motive here and look at the source, this is very flimsy ...
BUMP-TO-THE-TRUTH!
"McCain would rather lose an election than lose the war. Obama would put American troops in harm's way just to win an election. The choice is clear. America needs a leader who puts our troops and country first. Vote John McCain."
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
If our country was still SANE, such behavior could result in a LITERAL death sentence.
and continue their 'feeding frenzy' spending their time going through Gov. Palin's per diem records!
UNCONSCIONABLE.
BTTT
Let’s make sure our sources are reliable before we go off and run every “conspiracy” story that may be damaging. Oh wait, the media and DEMS are already doing that to Sarah, aren’t they?
No thoughts on what I said above? We could be looking like fools on this one ...
OBAMA BIB BIDEN is just the latest installment.
Big surprise isn't it ...
If true . . . GAME. OVER.
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