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Iraq Status-Of-Forces Agreement: Why It’s A Really Bad Deal No Matter How You Look At It

June 11th, 2008
By SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist

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In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came. — AMBASSADOR RYAN CROCKER

Having royally screwed up just about everything else over the past seven-plus years, George Bush’s last best hope of tying the hands of the next administration before heading back to Texas to search for his legacy among the scrub brush is a status-of-forces agreement with Iraq.

The problem for Bush is that hardly anyone likes the agreement except he and Nouri al-Maliki. This is because it is a really bad deal for everyone except the nanny president and his diapered prime minister protege. Oh, and American oil companies, too.

Under the agreement, formally known as a “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America,” Iraq would:

* Grant the U.S. long-term rights to maintain as many military bases as it wants — 58 according to some accounts, compared to the present 30 — and where it wants them.

* Allow the U.S. to conduct military strikes against Iran and any other country without the permission of the Iraqi government.

* Allow the U.S. to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq.


* Allow U.S. forces to arrest any Iraqi for any reason without consulting local authorities.

* Grant immunity from Iraqi law to U.S. troops and contractors.

* Place the Iraqi Defense, Interior and National Security ministries under U.S. supervision for 10 years.

* Give the U.S. responsibility for Iraqi armament contracts for 10 years.

And although the word oil does not appear anywhere in the agreement, there is an open secret of a quid pro quo: U.S. oil companies get first dibs at Iraq’s vast untapped oil wealth and Al-Maliki gets coup insurance.

Pretty amazing, eh?

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.



This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 3:52 am and is filed under Withdrawal, Military Affairs, Gulf War, Nouri al-Maliki, John McCain, Congress, Iraq, George W. Bush, 2008 Elections. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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