Word: pacts
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...process along, Pentagon officials say. The President-elect had proposed on the campaign trail to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office, a position closer to the Iraqi government's than to that taken by the Bush Administration. The intra-Iraqi squabbling over the pact, partly fueled by Iran's concerns, evaporated following Obama's election two weeks ago. "I am hopeful that conditions will continue to improve, so we can continue" to withdraw U.S. troops, Mullen said. But if ordered to pull out despite poor conditions - a possibility many Pentagon officials fear...
...Iraqi Cabinet on Sunday finally approved the contentious Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which provides a legal basis for U.S. military operations to continue in Iraq after Dec. 31, when the U.N. mandate expires. But it's too early to pop the champagne. The bilateral U.S.-Iraqi security pact is by no means a done deal: it must still be ratified by a fractured parliament. The Cabinet vote had only one nay to 27 ayes, but nine Cabinet members chose to withdraw from the final tally, a foreboding sign of the controversy the agreement will face in the legislature...
...main sticking point. Of the six present in the 37-member Cabinet, three stayed away from Sunday's vote, two grudgingly gave their conditional approval and one - the Minister for Women's Affairs, Dr. Nawal al-Samarrei - voted against the measure because it did not agree to put the pact to a referendum, a key demand of the Tawafuk Front. The front is the largest Sunni parliamentary bloc with 44 of the legislature's 275 seats. "If Tawafuk says no, that means the Sunnis say no," said party spokesman Omar Almashhadani. "We prefer that the U.N. mandate be extended...
...that's not enough for some Iraqi leaders, like the firebrand Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. On Friday he threatened to resume attacks against U.S. troops if they don't withdraw "without retaining bases or signing agreements." By rejecting the pact, al-Sadr, like some other opponents of the deal, is also hoping to burnish his nationalist credentials ahead of crucial provincial polls in January...
...Malone to the future. From these wraiths we learn that pacifists like Malone would have been responsible for the continuation of slavery into the 21st century (because they opposed the Civil War) and for the Holocaust (you know why). A flashback to 1938 shows Neville Chamberlain signing the nonaggression pact with Hitler, then shining the Nazi leader's shoes as he and his henchman sing Kumbaya. Finally seeing the red light, Malone takes the Garden stage to proclaim, "We're in a real war, people, with the worst threat since the Nazis!" And he doesn't mean the Patriot...