Word: khalilzad
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...prime minister in any mood to placate his critics. In addition to criticizing the U.S. military, al-Maliki on Wednesday also publicly slapped down U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. He dismissed suggestions - made a day earlier by Khalilzad - that Iraqi political parties had agreed to timetables for dealing with the violence. "No one has the right to impose a timetable" on the Iraqi government, he said...
...finally had enough. In a press conference in Baghdad today, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and General George Casey announced that the Iraqi government has agreed to a timeline to take over security responsibilities, quell sectarian violence, split oil revenues and negotiate a truce with the Sunni insurgents. According to Khalilzad and Casey, it will all take place within 18 months. And how does anyone know the Iraqis can achieve all that? Because we say they have to. "Iraqi leaders must step up," Khalilzad says, "to achieve key political and security milestones on which they have agreed...
...didn't Casey and Khalilzad do so? Their refusal to utter the "w" word reflects the broader lack of candor that still characterizes our debate about what to do in Iraq. The White House now says it intends to stop using the phrase "staying the course," and Democratic leaders talk about the need for a "new strategy," but neither is willing to publicly commit to a definitive plan - also known by the more politically perjorative phrase "timetable" - for getting U.S. troops out. In the Washington Post today, Richard Holbrooke argues for Bush to "disengage" from Iraq and seek a political...
...insurgents to crow that the U.S. is cutting and running, but after $1 trillion and 3,000 dead, we're in 11th-hour, face-saving, loss-cutting mode now. It's possible that 18 months isn't enough time for the Iraqis to meet the goals set out by Khalilzad today. The truth is that no one knows how long it will take for Iraq to make peace with itself. But it's time for the U.S. to make it clear that we don't intend to stay to find...
...less time than it takes a bullet to fly from the barrel of a gun. But life in Iraq has become so bloody and death so ever present, random and unpredictable that some Iraqis are nostalgic for Saddam's tyranny. When I told U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad about the killings of witnesses' families in Dujail, he shook his head but said the current loss of life is "different than a government carrying on violence against its own citizens." Iraqis, he says, "have paid and are paying a high price to potentially head in a great direction that was not available...