IRAQ
The Beginning Of The End

On Sunday, after nearly a year of intense negotiations, Iraq's cabinet overwhelmingly approved a security agreement that requires coalition forces to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011. The final Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was a considerable victory for Iraqis because it set a firm deadline for redeployment, gave them significant jurisdiction "over serious crimes committed by Americans who are off duty and not on bases," and included a pledge that the United States would not use Iraqi territory to attack another country (e.g. Iran). As the New York Times noted, "An earlier version had language giving some flexibility to that [withdrawal] deadline...but the Iraqis managed to have the deadline set in stone, a significant negotiating victory." The next step is for the 275-seat parliament to vote on the accord, which is expected next week. While the White House has praised the cabinet's passage of the agreement, it has simultaneously tried to insist that the SOFA's redeployment deadline is conditions-based. But make no mistake: The deadline is final, and Iraqis will hold the United States to it. "This is not governed by circumstances on the ground," said cabinet spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. "This date is specific and final." As Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent noted, "The Bush administration intended the SOFA process to entrench the occupation. Instead it gave the Iraqi government the means to end it. And that's the best-possible way for the war to end: with the Iraqi government."

FIRM DEADLINE FOR WITHDRAWAL: Iraqis have long been sending signals that it's time for the United States to redeploy from Iraq. A September 2007 poll found that 79 percent of Iraqis opposed the presence of coalition forces in their country. In a more recent poll from September 2008, just 24 percent of Iraqis said that they had confidence in those troops to protect them. In July, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki endorsed then-senator Barack Obama's 16-month withdrawal timetable and had been aggressively pushing the Bush administration to set a firm deadline. According to one of Maliki's aides, the prime minister wanted to "eliminate" any chance U.S. forces would stay after 2011. "We don't call it a security pact but an agreement to withdraw the troops and organize their activities during the period of their presence in Iraq," Maliki reportedly said about the SOFA. As Wonk Room writer Matthew Duss has noted, there's little doubt that "Obama's election has had an effect on the calculations of Iraq's political leaders, and strengthened their position against the Bush administration. ... President Bush instead clung to a fantasy of a long-term military presence in Iraq, and now finds the impending arrival of a new administration being used as leverage against him."

DENYING THE CHANGING ORDER: The Bush administration has long been trying to avoid a firm deadline in the SOFA. In fact, after Maliki endorsed Obama's withdrawal timeline in July, "the U.S. embassy in Baghdad contacted Maliki's office to express concern and seek clarification on the remarks." A few hours after that strong-arming, not coincidentally, a Maliki aide released a statement (inaccurately) saying that the prime minister's original remarks had been "misunderstood and mistranslated." Additionally, as The Progress Report revealed in September, the White House pushed the Iraqi government to extend the U.S. presence in Iraq to help Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who consistently argued against a withdrawal timeline during the presidential campaign. Now, the Bush administration is trying to deny that the SOFA contains a firm deadline. Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said that the 2011 withdrawal date was just "aspirational." That same day, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen inaccurately said that the withdrawal would still be based on conditions on the ground.

RESIDUE OF MISMANAGEMENT: Evidence of America's bungling will remain in Iraq long after troops leave. Bush administration officials are trying to cast the SOFA as evidence of their overwhelming victory in Iraq. "As we've been saying since July, when we said that we would work with the Iraqis to establish a date that we would aspire to -- we just keep getting success after success on the security front in Iraq," Perino said in a White House press briefing this week. On Monday, former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor argued that the SOFA's passage represented a "defeat" for Iran. However, in an interview this week with Duss, CNN's Michael Ware -- who has been reporting from Iraq for the past six years -- said that in some ways, the final SOFA was "a victory for Iran. In some ways you can argue that these [negotiations] have been a form of indirect peace talks with Iran to end that part of the conflict." Indeed, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, chief of Iran's judiciary, said on Iranian state television, "The Iraqi government has done very well regarding this." With all the focus on Iraq, Afghanistan has quickly been falling into a "downward spiral"; Bush administration officials are now privately admitting that Afghanistan is the "single most pressing security threat in the war on terror." Yesterday, Mullen confirmed to the Associated Press that Obama's plan to quickly move troops from Iraq into Afghanistan is viable.

Under the Radar

CONGRESS -- LIEBERMAN 'GRATEFUL' SENATE DEMS BACKED DOWN FROM REBUKING HIM: In a closed door meeting yesterday, Senate Democrats voted 42-13 to allow Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to keep his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, despite numerous attacks on Barack Obama on behalf of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during the presidential campaign. "I feel good about what we did today," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). So did Lieberman, who noted during a press conference yesterday that he didn't at all feel "chastened" by his Senate colleagues. Reid did ask Lieberman to give up his gavel of the Environment and Public Works subcommittee, however, he will stay on as chair of the Armed Services subcommittee. However, this hardly represents a scathing rebuke. Reid specifically avoided singling Lieberman out and instead will enforce and old Senate rule restricting all senators to only one committee chairmanship and one subcommittee chairmanship. Lieberman said he is "very grateful" that his colleagues let him go unscathed.

JUSTICE -- TEXAS GRAND JURY INDICTS CHENEY, GONZALES: Yesterday, a grand jury in South Texas indicted Vice President Cheney and former attorney general Alberto Gonzales for "'organized criminal activity' related to alleged abuse of inmates in private prisons." The indictment said Cheney is "profiteering from depriving human beings of their liberty." The indictment focuses on Cheney's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in private prison companies; it also accuses Gonzales of using his position to "stop the investigations as to the wrong doings" into assaults in county prisons. The indictment is just the latest addition to Gonzales' legal troubles. This summer, six attorneys "rejected from civil service positions in the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Gonzales for allegedly rejecting them because of their political views. McClatchy reports yesterday that the Justice Department has agreed to pay for a private lawyer to defend Gonzales, which could cost taxpayers up to $24,000 per month. The Department has allegedly set a limit of $200 an hour on attorney's fees. By contrast, top Justice Department attorneys "generally earn no more than $100 per hour." 

IRAQ -- WSJ COLUMNIST SUGGESTS OBAMA GIVE STEPHEN HADLEY THE MEDAL OF FREEDOM: In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, President Bush's former chief speechwriter, William McGurn, recommended that President-elect Obama give National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley the Presidential Medal of Freedom. McGurn's argument was based solely on the idea that "without this good man's courage and persistence, there would have been no surge" in Iraq. It's true that Hadley made many of the key decisions regarding the escalation in Iraq and that the strategy has helped reduce violence, though political accommodation in Iraq is still elusive. But McGurn's focus on the surge ignored Hadley's role in selling the Iraq war to the American people based on false information. For example, Hadley was a member of the White House Iraq Group, which was assigned to "educate the public" about the threat of Saddam Hussein and whose creation coincided with the "escalation of nuclear rhetoric" before the war. He also disregarded memos from the CIA and a personal phone call from Director George Tenet warning that references to Iraq's pursuit of uranium be dropped from Bush's speeches. The false information ended up in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

Think Fast

According to two legal sources close to the presidential transition, President-elect Barack Obama "has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department."

Senate Democrats called on President Bush yesterday to "halt any effort by his administration to place political appointees in career jobs just weeks before his team leaves office." Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sent a letter to Bush urging him "to keep his pledge of a smooth transition without partisan maneuvering.

Despite formal dissents from half of the agency's 10 regional administrators, the Environmental Protection Agency "is finalizing new air-quality rules that would make it easier to build coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other major polluters near national parks and wilderness areas." The proposal would make it so spikes in pollution during periods of peak energy demand would no longer violate the law.

Incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel "challenged chief executives and other business leaders Tuesday night to join the new administration in a push for universal health care, saying incremental increases in coverage won’t be acceptable." "I'm challenging you today, we're going to have to do big, serious things," Emanuel told the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." More »

Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 terror plot," will face new war-crimes charges despite "claims that his harsh interrogation would make a prosecution impossible." Military documents show Qatahni was subjected to "prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, exposure to cold," among other harsh interrogation methods.

In a televised address Tuesday night, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki defended the new security pact promising U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011. Maliki characterized the pact as "a strong beginning to get back the full sovereignty of Iraq in three years." There is considerable opposition to the agreement among Sunni lawmakers and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen said in an interview yesterday that "[s]tress on U.S. troops from repeated combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan is 'extraordinary'and may be worsening even as fighting eases in Iraq." Mullen "expressed hope that the strain will be relieved gradually as the Marine Corps and Army expand the pool of available forces."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said Tuesday that Democrats will not push to reinstate a ban on offshore oil drilling next year. "I don't think there is any intent at this point in time...to return to the same position we were in” before the ban was lifted, Hoyer said.

And finally: It's "bettin' time" in the Senate. Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) will settle a friendly wager with Sens. Mel Martinez (R-FL) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) on the 2008 World Series. "The Florida Senators will deliver on their end of the bet with a box of citrus, Cuban pastries, Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish and copies of the Columbia Restaurant Spanish Cookbook," according to a release.

Good News

"The number of young people considering a military career has significantly increased for the first time in about five years, buoyed by more positive news out of Iraq."

State Watch

MASSACHUSETTS: New report says state leads in moving its economy away from the old industrial model to "one based on technology, creativity and innovation.

MARYLAND: "Maryland State Police labeled members of a Montgomery County environmental group as terrorists and extremists days after they held a nonviolent protest."

CALIFORNIA: State is unprepared for effects of global warming, according to a new report.

ALASKA: New ethics complaint filed against Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

Blog Watch

THINK PROGRESS: Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee claims the civil rights of gays are not being violated: They aren't getting their "skulls cracked."

WONK ROOM: The U.S. Chamber of chicken littles.

YGLESIAS: The social consequences of a prolonged economic downturn.

THE MONKEY CAGE: Does military service help candidates?

Daily Grill

"We did not torture."
-- White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, 11/18/08

VERSUS

"The CIA director on Tuesday publicly named for the first time the three suspected al Qaeda detainees who were subjected to the harsh interrogation technique of waterboarding."
-- CNN, 2/5/08