The latest prediction for the Iran bombing is July 3. The date is floating around out there in talk radio land and in corners of the blogosphere. Why July 3rd?
Possibly because that leaves about a three-week-war's-worth of bombing time before a "status of forces agreement" is signed and sealed with the Iraq government which will define the future of our military and private contractors in Iraq. The deadline for signing the agreement comes at the end of July.
The Iraq government doesn't want to give the Bush administration the latitude it wants. Above all, the Iraqi government very precisely does not want America to use Iraq as a staging ground for a bombing campaign in Iran.
The Washington Post reports:
"The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq," said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament's foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "If we can't reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, 'Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don't need you here anymore.' "
A discussion of what to expect from the Bush -- and the next -- administrations, particularly with respect to the use of American bases in Iraq for incursions into Iran, can be found here.
The extent of the dispute is laid out in an NPR report from Lourdes Garcia-Navarro in Baghdad. What the Bush administration wants is to leave Iraq without a shred of sovereignty. Here's the report:
The US has 80 "status of forces" agreements around the world, but none is proving as contentious as the one being hammered out with Iraq. The SOFA, as it's known, will not detail particular troop levels or commit the US to a length of stay in Iraq. Officials say it will establish a wide set of guidelines under which American troops operate. According to a number of Iraqi lawmakers, the negotiations are not going well.
"There are so many problems at the moment with the SOFA agreement and the abyss between the two is so huge that they seem to be unable to bridge this gap." Haider al-Abadi is an Iraqi member of parliament and an advisor to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "The US side -- they want almost full freedom in using Iraq airspace, full freedom in movement on the ground for US forces. They want freedom to arrest and detain, and they want freedom to attack any group or place which they label as being a 'terrorist' target. In such cases, the US side insists, they don't need the authorization of the Iraqi government."
That is a particular concern for Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, an Iraqi lawmaker with the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council. [Translator]: "We cannot see a continuation of the repeated daily scene where American forces raid a place without the knowledge of the Iraqi courts, without the knowledge of the Iraqi forces. Is that sovereignty?"
Immunity for American soldiers and US contractors is also proving to be a sticking point. There are tens of thousands of private security contractors in Iraq. They enjoy full immunity from prosecution here in Iraq, and rarely face American justice either. Last year Blackwater, which protects American diplomats, shot dead 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.
Ali al-Abib heads Prime Minister Maliki's Dawa party in Parliament. He says another concern is the possibility that the US could use their forces here to attack another country -- like Iran. [Translator]: "Iraq should not be the point to launch attacks against any other country. We're not enemies to anyone."
Iraqi lawmakers say that the US initially asked for over 50 military installations -- about four superbases and other smaller locations that would be logistics areas or combat outposts. The US insists that any bases would be temporary. According to Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqis have countered with their own proposals: American forces cannot take prisoners; they must turn over any detainees to Iraqi authorities; they will only be allowed to use certain corridors of Iraq airspace. And: "The other issue is the freedom to bring any people to Iraq without even the knowledge of the Iraqi government. That, of course, is not acceptable. More often than not, we are surprised by a visit by a US official without the knowledge of the Iraqi government. It means Iraq is not a sovereign nation. The other issue is monetary. The US Army brings hundreds of millions of US dollars ... and this can affect the Iraqi currency and the Iraqi colony."
The agreement can be abrogated by either side. But there is reported disagreement about how much notice will have to be given. Abadi says the US wants two years. The Iraqis say six months. Any agreement will eventually have to be ratified by the Iraqi parliament. US officials have refused to give details about the substance of the negotiations. But at a new conference in Baghdad today, the head US negotiator, David Satterfield, said he remains optimistic that a deal can be reached. "We have every confidence that the goal can be reached and can be achieved by the end of July deadline with both sides."
Iraqi lawmakers say the future of the accord is very much in doubt. One US official who spoke on background to NPR conceded that "not everything is resolved, and until everything is, nothing is."
Meanwhile, the US Congress is not unaware of the difficulties and uncertainties and is asking the administration for greater transparency.
In Washington, the White House hastily organized a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday after Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman and ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, respectively, demanded Monday that the administration "be more transparent with Congress, with greater consultation, about the progress and content of these deliberations."
In a letter Monday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Levin and Warner wrote that Congress, "in exercising its constitutional responsibilities, has legitimate concerns about the authorities, protections and understandings that might be made" in the agreements.
Although they have questioned the status of forces agreement's contents, lawmakers have not raised the issue of its congressional ratification.
The United States is a party to more than 80 such bilateral agreements in countries where American forces are stationed, but its proposals for the Iraq accord far exceed the terms of any of the others. Such agreements are traditionally signed by the U.S. president under his executive authority.
Although the administration has since said that the security framework is "nonbinding" and would not include any provisions for permanent bases or specific troop numbers, lawmakers charged that the White House was trying to tie the hands of Bush's successor and said the terms of the accord amounts to a defense treaty requiring congressional approval.
In a Senate hearing in April, a senior Defense Department lawyer acknowledged under questioning by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) that the Pentagon had no definition for the term "permanent base" and that it "doesn't really mean anything."
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