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WILL BUSH REACH INTO IRAQ AFTER HE'S GONE?
HIS THREATS FOR A LONG-TERM AGREEMENT SHOULD END AT CONGRESS
This is how Vice President Dick Cheney responded when a reporter last week reminded him that, after five years, fully two-thirds of the American people want to get out of Iraq.
So?
This is how President Bush responded in November 2006 when the American people gave his Iraq policy a "thumpin'," and gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress.
Instead of beginning to withdraw troops from Iraq, Bush did the exact opposite, escalating the war in what the media allowed him to name a "surge."
So? You can count on that being the response when, in July, Bush exceeds his constitutional authority yet again, and commits the nation to being in Iraq permanently.
If you look closely - which most people are not doing what with "American Idol" and the Hillary & Barack Show - you can see it from here.
Earlier this week, it was reported that troop levels will stay at pre-surge levels - 140,000 - through 2008. Iraq policy won't change until there is a new president.
Yet the lame-duck Bush administration continues negotiations on an agreement with the Iraqi government that could very well lock in the next president to policies that the American people and two of the candidates have repudiated.
In November, Bush and Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, signed a "Declaration of Principles" on an historically unprecedented, long-term agreement between the United States and Iraq to replace the United Nations resolution that provides the legal authority for the war. In it, Bush committed the United States to defend Iraq "from external and internal threats" and "provide security assurances and commitments to Iraq to deter foreign aggression."
The principles looked like the basis of a treaty resembling NATO or SEATO treaties that got the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate. But administration officials said they had no intention of bringing the agreement before Congress. As he has on issues from the Geneva Conventions to attempts at congressional oversight, Bush asserted unprecedented executive power.
He has always gotten away with it before; whether he could continue to do so after he leaves office remains uncharted - and chilling - territory. When Congress held hearings to attempt to learn more about the commitments, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at first stonewalled and then sent a couple of deputies to a March 4 hearing. They provided only vague generalities about what's going on and made no promises to seek congressional approval.
Democrats in Congress have introduced bills that would deny funding to any long-term agreement with Iraq that hasn't been approved by Congress. But given the chance to stop funding of the war 500 deaths ago, Democrats caved.
Republican John McCain agrees with an open-ended commitment to Iraq, but Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama don't. They should state unequivocably - loud enough for the Iraqis to hear - that they will not be bound by any agreements made without congressional approval.
President Bush made a commitment: So? *
