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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (27833)	4/17/2008 9:22:42 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: "We where an occupying power in Iraq, until we turned over authority to the provisional Iraqi government, which in turn handed it over to the elected Iraqi government." Which has NEITHER signed a Status of Forces agreement with us, nor basing rights nor Defense Treaty... nor (pursuant to the legal requirements of new Iraqi Constitution) ratified any of the above. (They ARE supposed to be a 'sovereign nation', right? I mean... isn't that what Bush said they were when the Constitution was approved? So, are they sovereign or not? And is rule of law followed... or not? You can't be just a little pregnant', either they have the rights of a sovereign nation, governed by a national Constitution... or they don't, and those claims are bogus.) Parenthetical point: no foreign treaty nor basing agreement has been submitted to the US Senate for ratification either.... The only legal authority governing our rights to be occupier at this point-in-time is the (extended last year by the Security Council for ONE YEAR... runs out again this December 31st.) U.N. Authorization. Interestingly enough... the Iraqi Parliament claims that the recent U.N. extension was illegally granted --- since the P.M. Maliki submitted it to the Security Council without seeking the Parliament's prior approval... (as their Constitution clearly mandates...), and the Parliament claims Maliki broke his promise to them by going behind their backs in secret.... (The Parliament says that they wanted to put a termination date on the occupation....) All that is probably academic at this point however... since TWO permanent members of the Security Council say that 'since Iraq is sovereign now they WILL NOT agree to ANY MORE EXTENSIONS of the U.N. authorization for the occupation after this (already extended once) U.N. Authorization runs out again this December 31st'. And that it will be up to the US and the Iraqis to reach a legal bi-lateral agreement between the two nations for any continuation of the occupation.... Which (the December 31st expiration) explains why Bush has been making serious noises about reaching some sort of legal basing agreement with Iraq.... Will be extremely interesting to see what develops, as the Iraqi Parliament will not allow itself to be bypassed by Maliki again (not if he wants to have a functioning government, that is...) and they are discussing various conditions that they want to put on any basing agreement (deadlines for the occupation to end, bi-lateral criminal agreements, etc.) IMO, the US Senate will not allow a shirking of the US Constitution, either... but we will see what develops.