IGM Obama in Iraq

Inter-Galactic Memo

To: Those interested in the current political landscape
Fr: Leavitt
Re: Troubling situation with Iraq



Following this memo is the actual article from the New York Post. I figured a lot of you won’t want to take the time to read it, but I didn’t want anyone thinking I was making this up.
The gist of it is this: According to quotes from the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, Senator Obama lobbied the Iraqi government to delay troop-withdrawal negotiations until after the election. This while publicly demanding immediate troop withdrawals for months. Apparently—and I’m going out on a limb here—this was in an effort to make it appear as if Obama’s new administration stepped in and saved the day—after the election. Obama also insisted that the delay be undertaken in order to allow congress to be involved in the status of US troops.

"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.

Congress has nothing to do with the prosecution of a foreign war. They can vote to fund it or not and that is all. I’m at a loss as to why Obama thinks Congress should be involved. The only possible reason for this is again, to delay the negotiations until Bush is out.
Obama has been claiming for years that the presence of troops in Iraq is illegal. While in Iraq he suggested that rather than let the “weakened Bush administration” reach an accord, we should seek an extension of the UN Mandate, thus admitting that the US is in Iraq under the formally recognized and legal UN mandate and sanctions against Iraq. He suddenly remembered the UN. Now that’s its in his best interest, the war is no longer “illegal”. (For those of us with only a remedial understanding of things; the war was never illegal. We went under the auspices of the UN Mandate.) Obama even tried to get the military to delay the withdrawals. They declined.
Obama has been pushing for troops to be taken out of Iraq and placed in Afghanistan for months, claiming that was always “where the real war was”. Now he is trying to convince Petraeus to delay that very transfer. Things that make you go h-m-m-m-m-m.
Mark Levin mentioned on his radio show that Obama has violated the Logan Act. This Act, first put into effect in 1799, forbids any unauthorized citizen from negotiating with a foreign government. Unless authorized by the Executive Branch, Senators have no such authority—that’s why we have Ambassadors. Said violation is a felony. No one has ever been prosecuted for this, which is why Jimmy Carter is not in prison.
Senator Obama is pretty confident. In fact, he believes he’s already in the White House. The arrogance is stunning. He rivals my brother.
Now, we all know nothing is going to happen because of any of this. The media will ignore it, Obama’s people will deny it anyway, and we will all blithely believe him. After all, it is Barack Obama—the anointed one. And I’m the last person to demand an investigation or prosecution. I just don’t think this recent faux pas warrants the fuss. But it does speak to the man’s personality, and honor. What he did is clearly dishonorable, if only technically illegal, and if McCain had done it, I would be every bit as amused and disappointed. And you would be hearing about it from every media outlet on the planet.


New York Post: 9-15-08
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.