Iraq End Game

The bargaining in Baghdad is getting serious as Iraqis pressure the Bush Administration for last-minute concessions on a status-of-forces agreement to sanction US presence beyond the end of the year.

But the American election and Bush's imminent departure have changed the game. Gone is the McCain mantra of "victory with honor," a prescription for open-ended American presence, and what's left is only haggling over details about the pace of troop withdrawal and how much control Iraqis will assume over security efforts in the meantime.

Iraqi leaders, while openly welcoming Barack Obama's timetable, are losing the luxury of factional jockeying in their own parliament and facing a timetable to resolve Shiite-Sunni differences about the future of their country.

The only questions left are when and how, not if, the loss of American lives and the expenditure of $10 billion a month finally come to an end.

Maliki and Obama Want Timetables

Unintentionally or not, the Iraqi prime minister is siding with the Democratic candidate for president on getting American troops out of his country.

"Today, we are looking at the necessity of terminating the foreign presence on Iraqi lands and restoring full sovereignty," Nouri al-Maliki is telling Arab ambassadors during an official visit to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Maliki says he is negotiating "either to have a memorandum of understanding for the departure of forces or a memorandum of understanding to set a timetable for the presence of the forces."

That makes it near-unanimous, with only George W. Bush and John McCain dissenting from what the American people, Barack Obama and now the Iraqi government want--a foreseeable end to our costly Middle East adventure.

Any day now, McCain's campaign may start telling us that our man in Baghdad is going soft on the insurgents.