Something interesting is happening in Iraq.
The government there is starting to push back on our plans to continue our military campaign. Specifically, they are suggesting that they do not want to continue the current open ended military agreement. They WANT a commitment from us to withdraw by a particular date.
This is interesting from a couple of perspectives.
John McCain has said that we aren’t going to leave until we can declare victory. What if the Iraqi’s decide that they want us to leave before we can claim whatever victory McCain is imagining? Is he going to honor the Iraqi government requests?
Barak Obama wants to leave as soon as we can logistically do so without putting our troops at undo risk. This won’t be easy either and will require some fairly delicate negotiations with Syria and Iran to allow us to leave in an orderly fashion.
The bottom line though is that the existing government has finally realized that their only hope for a piece of the oil pie is to start acting as if they run the place. So they are refusing to enter into a new agreement with the US to replace the one that is expiring until they get some better idea of when the US plans to withdraw. Otherwise, control is going to revert to regional militias; supplied, supported, and employed by America. Tribal and religious ties will determine where the money goes, and all of these factions will ultimately battle it out for control of the country.