Does this finally make the point?
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will call on his fighters to maintain a cease-fire against American troops but may lift the order if a planned Iraq-U.S. security agreement lacks a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces, a spokesman said Thursday.
The point being that The Surge was not primarily responsible for the cessation of violence; rather it was the al-Sadr cease-fire which initially took effect last August, the month before Patreaus's presentation to congress in which he took sole credit and mentioned Muqtada al Sadr not even once. (Full text at Real Clear Politics)
It would appear that Bush has little say in what happens in Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr is calling the shots. And Muqtada wants a timetable.
Call this a "getting the complete story" diary.
You'll recall recently that GWB recently said "Ain't what I heard!" when asked about Al-Maliki's comments to the effect that he supported a plan similar to Barack Obama's 16 month timetable. It seems that Bush bristles when he hears the word "Timetable," and has taken Al-Maliki to the woodshed for mentioning it in the past. He and what remains of his damage control team attempted for weeks to lay to rest rumors that Al-Maliki said what he did say without prompting to Der Spiegel, whose audio tapes had been checked by the NY Times.
This is from an interview with the prez on August 5th, quoted in this article from TPM, but the original source is found here at WaPo.
SEOUL, Aug 5 -- President Bush said Monday he sees little distance between himself and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on how to approach troop reductions in Iraq, dismissing the suggestion that Maliki had effectively endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's plan to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades in 16 months.
"I talk to him all the time, and that's not what I heard," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post aboard Air Force One on the start of a trip to Asia. "I heard a man who wants to work with the United States to come up with a rational way to have the United States withdraw combat troops depending upon conditions on the ground, that's all." [Emphasis mine]
McCain says, "No, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, yes, well, I never said timetables."
The news from al-Sadr quoted above would indicate that he is calling the shots here, and from the looks of things, Bush is going along with it. For the last several months Bush and Co. have been trying to strong-arm the Iraqi's into accepting an "agreement" which essentially kept US soldiers in Iraq for 10 years. That fantasy has finally died for Bush. Al-Sadr doesn't like the idea. Sorry. Now Bush has to eat crow and do his best to look like he ordered it himself. That has already started:
In finally sending a senior State Department official to Geneva last month for nuclear talks with Iran, Bush simultaneously deprived the Iranians of an excuse not to pursue negotiations and reduced the saliency of Obama's campaign pledge to talk to Tehran.
About the same time, Bush reluctantly decided to allow U.S. negotiators to set specific timetables for withdrawing combat units from Iraq -- as Obama has demanded -- as long as they also obtained references to the withdrawals being based on battlefield conditions, as McCain and U.S. commanders want. [Emphasis mine]
McCain got his meaningless "references." Muqtada al-Sadr got his timetable. Not that Bush has much choice. If we want the peace, we need the cease-fire. If we want to keep the cease-fire, we have to get out with a timetable. The Prime Minister said it. The closest thing to the leader of the opposition said it. The people on the street say it.
Is there anything left to debate? My guess; McCain won't bring it up again, even though he gets to say, "But it's based on conditions on the ground!"