Word: iraqi
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...McCain seemed to ignore the fact that while Washington had certainly demanded a conditions-based formula for withdrawing U.S. troops, the Iraqi government has managed to walk the Bush Administration back to the point where it has accepted firm withdrawal deadlines. The current version, described by U.S. officials as a "final" draft, specifies that U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraq's cities "no later than June 30th, 2009", and from all Iraqi territory "no later than December 31st, 2011." There is certainly a provision for those dates to be subject to "review," but changing them would require agreement from both...
...officials are signaling growing frustration over the fact that even after Washington has made substantial concessions to the Iraqi side on troop-withdrawal deadlines and other matters, the Iraqis have balked at closing the deal. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen warned this week that the failure of Iraq's government to pass the draft Status of Forces Agreement will have "dire consequences" for Iraq, while Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned the absence of an agreement might result in U.S. forces being confined to base after January 1, when the current United Nations mandate legitimizing their operations...
...Some American officials see the hand of Iran at work in the deadlock: U.S. commander General Ray Odierno last Sunday suggested that Tehran had tried to bribe Iraqi leaders in order to deal a setback to the U.S. - charges the Iraqis angrily reject. Iran certainly opposes any agreement extending the U.S. military presence on its doorstep, and the dominant political parties in the U.S.-backed government are, in fact, the Iraqi factions closest to Iran. More important, however, may be the fact that the U.S. invasion has led to Iraq being turned into a democracy, where the will...
...Gang. The war has been a jumping-off point for psychological family drama (Christopher Shinn's Dying City, about a war widow reunited with the brother of her husband, recently killed in action) and for polemical journalism (George Packer's Betrayed, based on his reportage about the plight of Iraqi citizens who went to work for the Americans early in the war, then were abandoned to face sectarian revenge). Some plays are stripped-down monologues, like Judith Thompson's Palace of the End, in which an Iraqi woman, a British weapons expert and a U.S. soldier who took part...
Financial pressure is not, in itself, sufficiently strong right now to hasten a pullout from Iraq. But the fact that it coincides with a gloomy intelligence assessment of that country's political prospects, growing demands for U.S. reinforcements in Afghanistan, and the elected Iraqi government's insistence on a withdrawal deadline, suggests that the end of the U.S. mission in Iraq may be coming into view - and that its terms may fall short of victory as defined by the war's authors...