Word: sofas
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...think I could survive if I didn't? We'd never be forgiven ... I'd have to hire a food taster, somebody to start my car in the morning." Even after he won the GOP nomination, he demanded that his new campaign plane be configured to include a sofa up front so he could re-create the Straight Talk Express...
...latest thinking among negotiators on the question of immunity, saying "this issue, as you know, is also a sensitive issue that deals with sovereignty." But the Iraqi foreign minister made clear he at least thinks new rules will apply in the coming Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, which U.S. and Iraqi negotiators hope to complete before the end of the year. "What we have accomplished in this agreement is the most advanced version of any SOFA or strategic agreement between the United States and any other country in the world." Whether it strips American soldiers of immunity remains...
...Maliki made the announcement amid widespread opposition among the Iraqi government to U.S. demands put forward during ongoing negotiations over the more formal Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). The SOFA would create a legal framework for a long-term U.S. troop presence in the country after the U.N. mandate expires in December. The sudden mention of a timetable - a concept aggressively supported by al-Maliki's rivals in the Sadrist movement - may have come as a shock to Washington...
...Negotiations and discussions are ongoing every day. It is important to understand that these are not talks on a hard date for withdrawal," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. There is some basis for this relatively calm assessment out of Washington. Last month, al-Maliki said negotiations over the SOFA had reached a "dead end." His Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, later admitted the comment was little more than a negotiating tactic...
...Maliki may indeed be showing his true colors. Last month Iraq's speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadanni, predicted this shift in the government's negotiating stance with the U.S. "[Maliki's] Shi'ite coalition is publicly with the [SOFA] agreement but secretly against it," says al-Mashhadanni. "They came to power because of an agreement with the multinational forces, and they [have to] thank them for that. But the [long-term] presence of the multinational force will affect their [popular, nationalist] position." (Al-Mashhadanni's own party, the Sunni Tawafuq bloc, has the reverse problem; according to al-Mashhadanni...