While Bush Announces 8,000 Troop Withdrawal, Leaked Draft Agreement
Calls for Indefinite Occupation

Iraqi Blogger Raed Jarrar: The U.S./Iraq agreement legitimizes long
term bases and calls for an indefinite number of U.S. troops to remain
in Iraq.

Amy Goodman: President Bush announced Tuesday he would withdraw 8,000
troops from Iraq by February. He also called for a, quote, "quiet
surge" in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The President
outlined his plan in a speech at the Naval War College.

President George W. Bush: [General Petraeus has] just completed a
review of the situation in Iraq, and he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
have recommended that we move forward with additional force
reductions. And I agree. Over the next several months, we will bring
home about 3,400 combat support forces, including aviation personnel,
explosive ordinance teams, combat and construction engineers, military
police and logistical support forces. By November, we'll bring home a
Marine battalion that is now serving in Anbar province. And in
February of 2009, another Army combat brigade will come home. This
amounts to about 8,000 additional American troops returning home
without replacement.

AG: Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, criticized
President Bush for keeping troop levels in Iraq largely unchanged.
Speaking in Ohio on Tuesday, Obama said, "In the absence of the
timetable to remove our combat brigades we will continue to give
Iraq's leaders a blank check instead of pressing them to reconcile
their differences."

But neither Senator Obama nor President Bush made reference to a
recently leaked draft of an Iraqi-U.S. agreement that outlines the
long-term status of U.S. forces in Iraq. Iraqi blogger and political
analyst Raed Jarrar has read and translated the leaked document. He
says the agreement doesn't set a deadline for the withdrawal of
non-combat U.S. troops in Iraq. He joins us also from Washington, D.C.

Welcome, Raed. Talk about what you have found, what this leaked
document says that you've translated.

Raed Jarrar: Well, it's a long document. It has twenty-seven articles.
And most of them are outrageous. They give the U.S. unprecedented
authorities and rights and immunities. Maybe a major point that is
related to this discussion is the fact that the agreement legitimizes
or legalizes these long-term bases, that indefinite number of U.S.
troops will stay there.

Now, this is a huge issue that is not being discussed in the U.S.
enough. We usually get stuck in discussing troops level, how many
troops are the U.S. going to keep in Iraq, or what's the mission of
these troops. But from an Iraqi point of view, the majority of Iraqis
and the majority of Iraqi parliamentarians and other representatives
of the Iraqi community are demanding a complete withdrawal that leaves
no permanent bases, no troops and no private contractors. And
unfortunately, from this side, from the U.S. side, both of the ruling
parties and both of the mainstream candidates are planning to leave
permanent bases with troops indefinitely.

AG: And what about the Iraqi leadership right now? What are they
saying?

RJ: Now, the Iraqi leadership in the executive branch, which is a
non-elected branch of the Iraqi government, are allied with the Bush
administration. They are using the same terminology of the Bush
administration. They're asking for a withdrawal, a partial withdrawal
or withdrawal of what they call "combat troops," without really
defining that. And they are OK with leaving permanent bases and U.S.
troops in the long run that have immunity inside and outside the
bases.

Now, the Iraqi leadership in the other branch of the government, the
only elected branch, the parliament, actually is asking for a complete
withdrawal. And these calls do reflect -- the calls for a complete
withdrawal do reflect what the majority of Iraqis want. More than
three-fourths of the Iraqi population are asking the U.S. to leave
completely, not leave, you know, half and keep some tens of thousands
of troops behind to do some extra missions.

AG: And Barack Obama, does he represent something different, Raed?

RJ: Maybe from a U.S. point of view, there is a difference in
rhetoric. But from an Iraqi point of view, I think both the
candidates, Obama and McCain, are planning to leave troops in the long
run. So from an Iraqi point of view, I don't think there is a major
difference in the U.S. foreign policy in Iraq between the two
candidates, because both of them are not for ending the intervention
in Iraq. Both of them are for keeping troops in Iraq. They call it
residual force; they call it whatever they want to call it. But they
want to continue interfering in Iraq militarily and politically in the
long run.

And this is something that is completely rejected by Iraqis. Iraqis
see the complete U.S. withdrawal as the first step towards their
national reconciliation and reconstruction, not the same way that some
of the candidates now are trying to use withdrawal as a tool to punish
Iraqis or, you know, make sure that Iraqis are not being lazy or
sleeping. I mean, it's not that way. Iraqis are fighting politically
and in other ways to end this illegal occupation of their country. And
it's not a gift that -- or not something that we should be bargaining
with them. It's their right to ask to get their country back. And
unless they get their country back completely, I don't think Iraq will
become a stable place.

AG: Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has said all U.S.
troops should be out by the end of 2011. How does that fit into this
picture? And what about the latest deal that has been made between, I
think the report was, Shell, the oil company, and the Iraqi
government?

RJ: Again, what Nouri al-Maliki is saying is that all U.S. combat
troops will leave, but there will be exceptions that will stay in Iraq
indefinitely. Now, this view that Mr. al-Maliki is representing in
Iraq is completely rejected. Iraqis do not support the idea of
half-withdrawal and leaving U.S. troops on the long run. In fact, the
full agreement, that can be viewed on my organization's website now,
on afsc.org, can show you in details how the U.S. will stay on the
long run and who gets to decide the troops level and the troop tasks.
It's neither the Iraqi nor the U.S. elected officials.

Now, a good thing that you bring up the issue of the oil deals,
because we went through a very similar discussion to what we're
discussing now last year about the oil law. The Bush administration
and al-Maliki's administration tried to pass an oil law, and then the
Iraqi legislative branch blocked it, the same way that now they are
trying to pass this long-term agreement and the Iraqi parliament is
blocking it. And they ended up losing that battle, because the
majority of Iraqis and the majority of Iraqi parliamentarians rejected
the law Â… Many people are expecting that the Iraqi parliament will
reject this U.S. long-term agreement, and maybe they will end up
finding other loopholes to pass it.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news
program, Democracy Now!