Iraq demands US withdrawal timeline
10/8/08
The US must provide a “clear timeline” to withdraw its troops from Iraq as part of an agreement allowing them to operate in Iraq beyond this year, Hoshiyar Zebari, Iraq’s foreign minister, has said. His comments on Sunday are the strongest public assertion yet that Iraq is demanding a timeline for US withdrawal. The Reuters news agency quoted Zebari saying an agreement, including the timeline, was “very close” and would probably be presented to the Iraqi parliament in early September. George Bush, the US president, has long resisted setting a timeline for withdrawal, but in July the White House began speaking of a general “time horizon” and “aspirational goals” to withdraw.
See: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/08/ 2008810172912864397.html
Paying a price for imperial designs
Adel Safty; 10/8/08
US President George W. Bush has often been criticised for not having an endgame to his Iraq policies, and, noted a recent editorial of The New York Times, “he stubbornly refuses” to have one. In the past few days, two setbacks to his Iraq policies have highlighted the vagaries of managing imperial designs, and the unpredictability of policies anchored in half-truths and improvisations: The Iraqi parliament went into recess without passing an election law considered necessary for the provincial elections - now jeopardised. And a security alliance with Iraq was not concluded by the informal deadline of July 31.
See: http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10236048.html