McCain Mantra: "As Conditions Permit"

There is a Karl Rovian rote to the attempted undermining of a growing Barack Obama-Nouri al-Maliki entente on getting American troops out of Iraq in the next two years.

Any withdrawal of troops "must be based on conditions on the ground," John McCain insisted yesterday as he stood next to George W. Bush's father, a living reminder that getting the US into an Iraq quagmire was not the only post-9/11 option.

McCain campaign surrogates are parroting the line that their candidate also wants to get us out, but not on a timetable or time line or time horizon, but only "as conditions permit," thereby branding any scheduled withdrawal as rash and dangerous.

On the PBS News Hour, adviser Max Boot contends "that any reductions in combat forces have to be based on conditions on the ground, not on rigid timetables imposed in advance" and that McCain and Maliki "agree that we can only have these major withdrawals of American troops if conditions on the ground permit. But that's something that Senator Barack Obama does not agree with. He wants to reduce U.S. troops, no matter what conditions on the ground are. And nobody can predict what Iraq will look like two years from now."

But exactly what does that mean? Are "conditions" to be taken as an end to all the murderous actions of bitter-ender al Qaeda insurgents or out-of-control fringe Moqtada al-Sadr militias?

Do "conditions" mean the suppression of all squabbling among sectarian factions in the Iraqi parliament and a binding agreement on hot-button issues such as sharing oil revenues?

Or are "conditions" a generic cover for the McCain campaign to make Obama look irresponsible for proposing any orderly exit from Iraq?

In all fairness, the Republican candidate is no longer pushing for an American presence in Iraq for a hundred years. Apparently, his time line is keeping the option open to scare American voters until after the November balloting is over.

Iraq: Three-Dimensional Chess in the Dark

Our future in Iraq is being settled, but no one there or here knows all the details or approves of what they do know.

The status of forces agreement (SOFA) will establish principles for a continued US military presence in Iraq beyond the expiration of the UN mandate at the end of this year, but as a July deadline approaches, the end game is as murky and confused as the start of it all.

"We have reached an impasse," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last weekend, "because when we opened these negotiations we did not realize that the US demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty and this is something we can never accept."

Back here, Congressman Bill Delahut, Chairman of a key House Subcommittee, is complaining that “Congress has received, to be polite, minimal information from the Bush administration on the agreement.”

Last summer Andrew Cordesman described Iraq as 'three-dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you." Now the shooting has subsided somewhat, but no one has turned the lights on.

One of the fascinating side shows is reflected in an OpEd in yesterday's New York Times: "With only perfunctory debate, the Bush administration is pressuring a divided Iraqi government to approve a security agreement that could haunt Washington’s relations with Baghdad for years to come.

"The 'strategic alliance' that President Bush is proposing eerily resembles, in spirit and in letter, a failed 1930 treaty between Britain and Iraq that prompted a nationalist eruption in Baghdad, a pro-Nazi military coup and a pogrom that foreshadowed the elimination of Baghdad’s ancient Jewish community."

This conclusion is based on the arguments of Ayad Allawi, the first prime minister after our occupation, backed by the CIA and now in exile agitating against al-Maliki with the help of very expensive Republican lobbyists in Washington

Today Thomas Friedman observes that the reconciliation process "has not reached a point where Iraq’s stability is self-sustaining. And Tuesday’s bombing in Baghdad, which killed more than 50 people at a bus stop in a Shiite neighborhood, only underscores that. The U.S. military is still needed as referee. It still is not clear that Iraq is a country that can be held together by anything other than an iron fist. It’s still not clear that its government is anything more than a collection of sectarian fiefs."

In fact, nothing about Iraq is clear other than it was huge blunder for the US to get in and it will be an unholy mess getting out.

Petraeus and Crocker: No Slam Dunk

After phony patriotism failed, the last refuge of the Bush Administration in Iraq has been competence, replacing robot generals and servile ambassadors with two men of substance, David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker.

For months, Bush has kept Congress from taking action to start stopping the war by hiding behind Petraeus’ September progress report. Now, worried about what the General and Crocker will say, the Administration is trying to have them testify in private while Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates do the public cheer-leading.

No dice, the Democrats answer. "Americans deserve an even-handed assessment of conditions in Iraq,“ House Democratic Chairman Rahm Emanuel declared, not “a snapshot from the same people who told us the mission was accomplished and the insurgency was in its last throes."

Administration’s worries are reflected in what the straight-talking Petraeus told reporters yesterday: "We know that the surge has to come to an end. I think everyone understands that, by about a year or so from now, we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now.”

Five years ago, Crocker was one of the authors of a State Department memo on the pitfalls of an attack. Based on long experience in Iraq, Crocker warned that an invasion could "unleash long-repressed sectarian and ethnic tensions" and that “the Sunni minority would not easily relinquish power, and that powerful neighbors such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to move in to influence events."

If you’re still trying to sell that war, you don’t want Petraeus and Crocker to do the pitching. You need a toady like George Tenet out there to predict a slam dunk.