The House and Senate have voted to approve another $100 billion to the war in Iraq.
There’s just one ultimate benchmark in this legislation for the withdrawal of US troops:
The bill also for the first time explicitly states that the U.S. would leave Iraq if asked by the Baghdad government. (Associated Press)
That benchmark has been met:
In an historic step, the besieged Iraqi parliament has taken a stand against the US occupation and for a rapid withdrawal of American troops. This is the perfect opportunity for a face-saving and orderly US withdrawal based on the request of a sovereign government. To reject the offer would paint the US as a naked imperialism without a fig leaf of legitimacy. Tom Hayden: They Want Us Out: Iraqi Parliamentarians Sign Withdrawal Petition
THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.
Press Conference May 24, 2007
Mr. Bush, this ultimate benchmark has been met: Iraq’s government is saying "Leave" to the US occupation:
Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation
By Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted May 9, 2007.
More than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected for the first time on Tuesday the continuing occupation of their country. The U.S. media ignored the story.
On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.
It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum).
Sovereinty Means Sovereignty: No Permanent Bases, No Privatized Oil
A sovereign and unified Iraq, free of sectarian violence, is what George Bush and Tony Blair claim they want most. The most likely reason that the United States and Britain have rebuffed those Iraqi nationalists who share those goals is that the nationalists oppose permanent basing rights and the privatization of Iraq's oil sector. The administration, along with their allies in Big Oil, has pressed the Iraqi government to adopt an oil law that would give foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than they enjoy in other major oil producing countries and would lock in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades.
The "blank check" was not so blank after all, there's a get out of hell and save face clause in there... only if the US ceases to undermine the democratic process in Iraq.