A Classified CIA Mea Culpa on Iraq

Larry,

Do you think President Obama should have renegotiated the SoFA to keep a stronger American presence in Iraq or not? Because the ball could have been dropped by him by reducing our influence and presence and paving the way for Iran….and of course the scapegoat may well be Bush for making the decision in the first place.

I believe that bad decisions can still have good endings and good decisions can end badly. There are many players involved, and nothing is guaranteed.

I believe Obama’s bad decision with Libya could still be salvaged by supporting the new government there and minimizing any destabilizing influence from extremists, including al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:

I’m not sure that it would have been the smartest thing for a brand new President to try to change things before he’d unpacked his belongings in the Oval Office and, anyway, Gates presumably had a big hand in the agreement which was signed.

Well, read these:

The Barack Obama of 2011 and the Barack Obama of 2008 don’t always see eye to eye.

Typically the presidential vision has overruled the candidate’s. (Extending the Bush tax cuts, supporting indefinite detention without trial and engaging in open-ended war in Afghanistan are a few examples.)

But in the case of the complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by the end of this year, candidate Obama prevailed over the president.

President Obama wanted to stay longer — as recently as a few weeks ago asking the Iraqi government to allow 10,000, then 3,000 troops to remain past New Year’s Eve.

But the president ultimately had no choice but to stick to candidate Obama’s plan — thanks, of all things, to an agreement signed by George W. Bush.

What makes this turn of events even more improbable is that Bush initially intended the agreement to do precisely the opposite: to lock the next president into staying in Iraq indefinitely. But back in 2008, Iraqi government officials — fed up with a seemingly endless U.S. occupation and emboldened by candidate Obama’s vow to withdraw most combat troops within 16 months — insisted on setting a deadline for departure.

“Bush didn’t want the date certain for withdrawal at the time; that was forced by the Iraqis,” said Daniel Serwer, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

And three years later, “that’s the same story with President Obama,” Serwer said.

The agreement, dubbed the Status of Forces Agreement, was mostly negotiated in 2008, at the height of the presidential race between Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The U.N. Security Council mandate for the multinational forces in Iraq, which had been extended three times already, was due to expire at the end of 2008. Instead of trying to extend that mandate, which the Iraqis opposed, Bush instead chose to enter into bilateral negotiations.

“When they started the negotiations with Iraq, they thought they were just going to write this thing and the Iraqis were going to accept what we wrote for them,” said Kenneth Katzman, a specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs at the Congressional Research Service.

“They wanted to make sure there would not a quick withdrawal. They wanted to make sure that the next president wouldn’t simply abandon the effort,” Katzman said. “And there was a belief when the negotiations started that the Iraqis were going to be much more pliable than they turned out to be.”

Back in the U.S., however, the Democratic presidential nominee-to-be was making the case for a quick withdrawal one of the centerpieces of his campaign.

As early as February 2007, when he officially announced that he was running, Obama proclaimed: “I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace.”

He spoke throughout the campaign about “ending the war responsibly.” In a July 2008 speech, after he had secured the Democratic nomination, Obama said of Iraq: “This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize. … By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe.”

The Bush-Cheney vision of the future — which administration officials felt certain the Iraqis would accept — was very different.

By June 2008, details of the negotiations were starting to leak out. The Independent, a British paper, reported that the Bush White House was insisting on retaining the use of more than 50 military bases in Iraq, controlling Iraqi airspace and maintaining a free hand to carry out military activities without consulting the Baghdad government.

Soon, the big news was that the American demands were infuriating Iraqi lawmakers, some of whom even threatened to kick out U.S. troops entirely.

“It was Barack Obama’s proposal that the Iraqis adopted as theirs,” Serwer said. “The Iraqis wanted the Barack deal, not the Bush deal.”

When both sides announced a resolution in August, Bush had acceded to the Iraqis’ major demands.

Most glaringly, it was a defeat for Bush to consent to precisely the kind of timetable that, when Obama and other Democrats had called for one, he repeatedly and contemptuously dismissed as schedule for surrender.

“I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East and [would] send a signal that America will not keep its commitments,” he had said in May 2007. “Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure — and that would be irresponsible.”

And although administration officials insisted that the deadline was still conditional — “aspirational” was their term of choice — the agreement also drove a stake through the heart of neoconservative hopes that Iraq would be a long-term staging area for the U.S. in the region.

The agreement made clear that there would be no lasting presence — something that can be seen playing itself out now, as the U.S. military turns over to the Iraqis dozens of outsized military bases that cost U.S. taxpayers over $2 billion to build.

Back in 2008, Bush got one concession: As USA Today reported at the time, he literally bought some time. “Iraq initially wanted all combat troops out by the end of 2009, but agreed to push the date to 2011, after the U.S. agreed to protect Iraqi funds in U.S. banks from being seized by creditors,” the story said.

In the end, the agreement called for a U.S. withdrawal that would be not quite as fast as Obama’s 16-month schedule called for — but its interim goal of ending combat operations in Iraqi cities by the summer of 2009 was faster than any commitment Obama had made.

Candidate Obama welcomed the news: “They are working on a plan that looks, lo and behold, like the plan that I’ve been advocating. I will encourage the administration to move forward with it,” he said at the time.

The deal wasn’t completely finalized until a few weeks after Obama won the presidency on November 4, with the Iraqis using his victory to pressure the Bush administration to make even more, last-minute concessions.

Three days after the agreement was signed, Reuters reported, the White House was still refusing to make its text public, even though it had already been published in full in an Iraqi newspaper.

There was no official announcement from the White House until the Iraqi parliament formally approved the agreement — and even then, Bush only issued a dry, written statement.

Bush had wildly underestimated the depth of Iraqi hostility toward an indefinite American presence, Spencer Ackerman wrote in the Washington Independent. “When the definitive history of the Bush administration’s prosecution of the Iraq war is written, its attempt to force the Iraqi government to sign a bilateral agreement authorizing an indefinite occupation will stand as its final massive blunder,” he wrote.

McClatchy Newspapers reported that senior military officials were privately criticizing Bush “for giving Iraq more control over U.S. military operations for the next three years than the U.S. had ever contemplated” and for giving in to Iraqi demands “to avoid leaving the decisions to his successor, Barack Obama.”

A few days later, in a radio address, Bush made a rare public mention of the December 2011 withdrawal date while putting a positive face on the deal. “The war in Iraq is not yet over,” he said, “but thanks to these agreements and the courage of our men and women in Iraq, it is decisively on its way to being won.”

Just a month before he left office, Bush flew to Baghdad, where he spent a little over seven hours on the ground and formally signed the agreement.

He told troops at Camp Victory: “The dramatic turnaround you led in Iraq culminated in the two agreements completed last month. … These agreements show the way forward toward a historic day — when American forces withdraw from a democratic and successful Iraq, and the war in this land is won.”

But whatever Bush had to say about the agreements that day was overshadowed by a far more visceral reflection of what was going on in Iraq, when an Iraqi reporter, standing about 12 feet away, threw two shoes directly at Bush’s head. With the first shoe, the man shouted in Arabic: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” And with the second shoe: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!”

Three years later, the Obama administration also underestimated the depth of Iraqi hostility to the U.S. presence in the country. Right up until Obama’s announcement last week, some administration officials were still expressing near certainty that the Iraqi government would request several thousand trainers to remain past the December 31 deadline.

But negotiations ultimately broke down over the issue of legal immunity for any remaining troops, which was an imperative for the Pentagon and a deal-breaker for the Iraqis, who after nearly nine years of U.S. military presence wanted no more infringements on their sovereignty.

As a result, Obama had no choice but to make the announcement he did on October 21. “As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end,” he said.

Obama said he had spoken to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and “reaffirmed that the United States keeps its commitments.”

“So today,” Obama said, “I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

Then read this:

How the Obama administration bungled the Iraq withdrawal negotiations
October 21, 2011

The Obama administration is claiming it always intended to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year, in line with the president’s announcement today, but in fact several parts of the administration appeared to try hard to negotiate a deal for thousands of troops to remain — and failed.

“I can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” President Barack Obama said today, after speaking with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “The last American soldier will cross the border out of Iraq with their held — heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops. That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.”

Deputy National Security Advisors Denis McDonough and Tony Blinken said in a White House briefing that this was always the plan.

“What we were looking for was an Iraq that was secure, stable, and self reliant, and that’s what we got here, so there’s no question that was a success,” said McDonough, who traveled to Iraq last week.

But what about the extensive negotiations the administration has been engaged in for months, regarding U.S. offers to leave thousands of uniformed soldiers in Iraq past the deadline? It has been well reported that those negotiations, led by U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and White House official Brett McGurk, had been stalled over the U.S. demand that the remaining troops receive immunity from Iraqi courts.

“What the president preferred was for the best relationship for the United States and Iraq going forward. That’s exactly what we have now,” McDonough said, barely acknowledging the administration’s intensive negotiations.

“We talked about immunities, there’s no question about that…. But the bottom line is that the decision you heard the president talk about today is reflective of his view and the prime minister’s view of the kind of relationship we want to have going forward. That relationship is a normal relationship,” he said.

Of course, the U.S.-Iraqi relationship is anything but normal. Following nine years of war, the death of over 4,000 Americans and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the disbursement of at least hundreds of billions of dollars of American taxpayer’ money, the United States now stands to have significantly less influence in Iraq than if the administration had been able to come to terms with Iraq over a troop extension, according to experts and officials.

“Iraq is not a normal country, the security environment is not normal, the embassy is not a normal embassy,” said Marisa Cochrane Sullivan, managing director at the Institute for the Study of War, who traveled to Iraq this summer and has been sounding the alarm about what she saw as the mishandling of the negotiations ever since.

For more evidence that the administration actually wanted to extend the troop presence in Iraq, despite today’s words by Obama and McDonough, one only has to look at the statements of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

In July, Panetta urged Iraqi leaders to, “Dammit, make a decision” about the U.S. troop extension. In August, he told reporters that, “My view is that they finally did say, ‘Yes.'” On Oct. 17, he was still pushing for the extension and said, “At the present time I’m not discouraged because we’re still in negotiations with the Iraqis.”

Sullivan was one of 40 conservative foreign policy professionals who wrote to Obama in September to warn that even a residual force of 4,000 troops would “leave the country more vulnerable to internal and external threats, thus imperiling the hard-fought gains in security and governance made in recent years at significant cost to the United States.”

She said that the administration’s negotiating strategy was flawed for a number of reasons: it failed to take into account Iraqi politics, failed to reach out to a broad enough group of Iraqi political leaders, and sent contradictory messages on the troop extension throughout the process.

“From the beginning, the talks unfolded in a way where they largely driven by domestic political concerns, both in Washington and Baghdad. Both sides let politics drive the process, rather than security concerns,” said Sullivan.

As recently as August, Maliki’s office was discussing allowing 8,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops to remain until next year, Iraqi Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie said in an interview with The Cable. He told us that there was widespread support in Iraq for such an extension, but the Obama administration was demanding that immunity for U.S. troops be endorsed by the Iraqi Council of Representatives, which was never really possible.

Administration sources and Hill staffers also tell The Cable that the demand that the troop immunity go through the Council of Representatives was a decision made by the State Department lawyers and there were other options available to the administration, such as putting the remaining troops on the embassy’s diplomatic rolls, which would automatically give them immunity.

“An obvious fix for troop immunity is to put them all on the diplomatic list; that’s done by notification to the Iraqi foreign ministry,” said one former senior Hill staffer. “If State says that this requires a treaty or a specific agreement by the Iraqi parliament as opposed to a statement by the Iraqi foreign ministry, it has its head up its ass.”

The main Iraqi opposition party Iraqiya, led by former U.S. ally and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, decided to tie that vote to two non-related issues. It said they would not vote for the troop extension unless Maliki agreed give them control of a high-level policy council and let them choose the minister of defense from their ranks. Maliki wasn’t about to do either.

“It was clear from the beginning that Maliki wasn’t going to make a move without the support of the other parties behind him,” Sullivan explained, adding that the Obama administration focused on Maliki and neglected other actors, such as Allawi. “There was a misunderstanding of how negotiations were unfolding in Iraq. The negotiations got started in earnest far too late.”

“The actions don’t match the words here,” said Sullivan. “It’s in the administration’s interest to make this look not like they failed to reach an agreement and that they fulfilled a campaign promise. But it was very clear that Panetta and [former Defense Secretary Robert] Gates wanted an agreement.”

So what’s the consequence of the failed negotiations? One consequence could be a security vacuum in Iraq that will be filled by Iran.

“It’s particularly troubling because having some sort of presence there would have really facilitated our policy vis-a-vis the Iranians and what’s going on in Syria. The Iranian influence is going up in Iraq,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It makes it harder for us to play our cards, and that’s a real setback. We’ve spent a lot of blood and treasure in Iraq. And these days, stability in that region is not what it used to be.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) echoed those sentiments in a statement today and expressed skepticism that Iraq is as “safe, stable, and self reliant” as the White House claims.

“Multiple experts have testified before my committee that the Iraqis still lack important capacities in their ability to maintain their internal stability and territorial integrity,” McKeon said. “These shortcomings could reverse the decade of hard work and sacrifice both countries have endured to build a free Iraq.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA), in his own Friday statement, backed up the administration’s argument that the lack of a troop extension was in the best interest of the United States and Iraq.

“The United States is fulfilling our agreement with an Iraqi government that wants to shape its own future,” he said. “The President is also following through on his commitment to end both the conflict in Iraq and our military presence… These moves appropriately reflect the changes on the ground. American troops in Iraq will be coming home, having served with honor and enormous skill.”

UPDATE: This article was amended after a White House official called in to say that it was not the “White House” that was pushing for an extension of U.S. troops.

“The White House has always seen the president’s pledge to get all troops out of Iraq as a core commitment, period,” the White House official said.

A critic:

What remained to be done when the Obama administration took office was implementing the agreement in ways that strengthened the practices and institutions of democracy in Iraq, incentivized non-sectarian political cooperation, continued confidence-building measures (especially along the Kurdish fault lines), reassured Iraq both of their sovereignty and our continuing involvement, and fostered support for Iraq among U.S. allies in the region.

What the Obama administration achieved instead is a faster end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq, but one that undercut the political objectives it remains in American interest to attain. Iraqis may achieve those things despite our policies, but they are not achieving them because of our policies. On that President Obama deserves to be held account.

The administration claimed it was committed to a “responsible withdrawal” from Iraq. But their policies of establishing deadlines unconnected to the progress of our war aims, inattention to political developments within Iraq, and unwillingness to acknowledge he increasing repressiveness of the Maliki government have shown the administration’s emphasis on withdrawal rather than responsibility.

On President Obama’s watch, the Maliki government struck hundreds of opposition Parliamentary candidates off the ballot; violated the Iraqi Constitution’s principle that the party gaining the most Parliamentary seats has the right to form a government; kept the country in a state of suspended animation without a government for seven months; refused a non-sectarian coalition choosing instead coalition with the virulently anti-American Muqtada al-Sadr; has not appointed either a minister of defense or a minister of the interior, preferring to hold those powers himself; declined to join in Arab League sanction of Syria’s government; looked the other way as Shi-ia militia emerged that, according to GEN Austen, the commander in Iraq, parallel Hezbollah in Lebanon; and now has arrested hundreds of Sunni “coup plotters.” Maliki has begun to resemble a character from the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, banal in his ruthlessness.

Maliki has even claimed that the U.S. is to blame for Iranian influence in Iraq, explaining that Iran had justification for its actions — the “excuse was that the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil…with it ends all thinking, calculations and possibilities for interference in Iraqi affairs under any other banner.” If Maliki actually believes that, it is both offensive and dangerously self-deceptive.

The Obama administration felt no need to counter the Iraqi prime minister’s statement; indeed, that would make news, and the only news the Obama administration wants about Iraq is “It’s Over!” The president’s consistent emphasis in talking about Iraq is that finally, the last American troops are coming home.

If no troops in Iraq is the metric for success, then President Obama has led us to success in the Iraq war. But if capitalizing on the gains won by our military to nurture an Iraq that is more than a Shi-ia autocracy leaning toward Iran, President Obama has merely conceded our political aims in order to get our troops out.

Condi Rice