Well, not so much…
Today was the deadline that the Iraqi government was supposed to roll over and capitulate to the Bush- Cheney Administration‘s demand for a Status of Forces Agreement that would formalize the permanent military occupation of their country.
The attempt to guarantee future investments of US oil companies in Iraq by transforming US troops into company security guards came with such onerous conditions that even the notoriously corrupt Iraqi politicians balked. Not the freezing of $5 billion of Iraqi funds in US banks, nor reported attempts to bribe individual members of the Iraqi Parliament with millions of dollars proved effective in the end.
Seems that turning their country into a colony of the military-industrioil-complex was a bridge too far.
The proposed SOFA included numerous gigantic permanent military bases, control of the skies under 27,000 feet, the freedom to launch military attacks against any groups deemed “terrorists”, the right to “defend” the country against any alleged attack by Iran, and immunization of military personnel and private contractors from prosecution or crimes committed against individual Iraqis.
Another fly in the ointment is a pesky provision in the Iraqi constitution that requires the Parliament to approve treaties, which the scale of the proposed SOFA certainly is.
Theoretically, the US Constitution demands the same thing from our Congress. But we all know how the Constitution has fared under nearly eight years of a power crazed “unitary executive” and its spineless, congressional enablers.
RIP.
[Image credit to http://tinyurl.com/5pr8pw]
