Word: sofas
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...wide parliamentary approval for the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) opens the final chapter of U.S military involvement in Iraq, setting a firm deadline for withdrawal. The vote, and the divisive deliberations leading up to it, may also mark the beginning of a new season of political conflict in Baghdad, as politicians seek to redistribute power away from the increasingly autocratic prime minister and towards the president and the parliament...
...import of the deal, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), is inarguable: after nearly six years, it would mark the beginning of the end of the U.S. occupation. Under SOFA's terms, the U.S. would withdraw nearly all 150,000 of its troops by New Year's Day 2012, leaving Iraq's security in the hands of its own army...
Meanwhile, the parliamentary drama has united Iraqis of all persuasions into a nation of SOFA potatoes: not since Saddam Hussein's trial have so many been transfixed by a legal debate. In restaurants and cafés across Baghdad, TV screens normally featuring music videos and Arabic soap operas were instead tuned to Iraqi news channels that seemed at times to be devoted exclusively to the story. It was democracy as reality TV. Iraqis watched as politicians denounced each other across the parliament floor and as Maliki griped at a press conference that failure to ratify the pact would leave...
...Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) has deeply divided Iraq's political factions. Proponents of the pact, led by Maliki's Shi'ite bloc and its Kurdish allies, emphasize that it reflects the fact that the Iraqi government has forced Washington to accept hard deadlines for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, and to make other concessions. Nationalist opponents led by firebrand Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr reject the agreement in principle, because it gives an Iraqi stamp of approval to the U.S. military presence in Iraq, which is currently authorized by the U.N. Security Council. The Sunni Tawafuk bloc, meanwhile, does...
...Maliki and his allies have the numbers to push SOFA through the parliament, but without overwhelming Sunni approval, the agreement would be tainted by its lack of national consensus. And so, the frenetic horse-trading over the security agreement has become a game of brinkmanship. On Wednesday, the prime minister personally lobbied recalcitrant parliamentarians at the nearby Rasheed Hotel, in exchanges that degenerated into fiery rows, according to a Maliki aide who was present...