As we predicted approximately two months ago, the U.S. and Iraq have begun talks that will likely codify Iraq as a protectorate of the U.S. for some years to come.

The United States and Iraq began talks on Tuesday on the future of the US military presence in the war-ravaged country, the Iraqi foreign ministry announced.

“The two parties started today, in the ministry of foreign affairs, talks …. on agreements and arrangements for long-term cooperation and friendship, including agreement on temporary US troop presence in Iraq,” the ministry said in a statement.

On November 26, US President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vowed to agree in 2008 on the terms for the future US military presence in Iraq.

The two leaders signed a non-binding statement of principles for the negotiations, setting a July 31, 2008 target date to formalize US-Iraq economic, political, and security relations.

At the time Maliki said the accord sets 2008 as the final year for US-led forces to operate in Iraq under a UN mandate, which the new bilateral arrangement would replace.

The new agreeement when finalised would trigger the end of UN sanctions imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and return full sovereignty to the government in Baghdad.

“All the justification created by the former regime is now over,” Maliki said on November 26, a reference to Saddam Hussein, the dictator ousted by the March 2003 US-led invasion and later executed.

The talks between delegations of the two countries are expected to cover issues at the heart of the bitter US debate over the war — including whether Washington would have permanent bases in Iraq, how many US troops would be stationed here, and for how long.

Amir Taheri has an analysis at the New York Post in which he claims that Iran now worries about too hasty a retreat by the U.S.  While I disagree with his analysis for reasons that are too detailed to enumerate at the moment, his article is worth glancing at due to the inclusion of what is quite possibly the ugliest picture of Moqtada al Sadr that has ever been published.  He looks like a toothless buffoon who needs a shave.  That menacing scowl is gone, possibly because he knows that we have sights on him.  There is no question that Iran wants the U.S. out of Iraq, and in case it has not sunk in the first thousand times it has been said, the Multinational Force again reiterated that Iran is playing a destabilizing role in Iraq.

… there are still groups and elements that are supporting the training and financing of criminal elements here inside of Iraq.  And we have briefed on multiple occasions the role that these groups inside of Iran are playing to support the special groups with training inside of Iran, the delivery of capability through that training that’s then exported back into Iraq, the funding of the activities of these special groups, as well as the, in some cases, the supplying of arms and munitions. 

The discovery of the caches that we continue to find on the battlefield today, some of which are fairly new in terms of its manufacture of the weapon itself, suggests that the activity of the training and financing, when added together with the constant flow of weapons into this country, makes for a very volatile and dangerous situation.

Hopefully the long term presence of U.S. troops will see them less involved in constabulary operations and more involved in border security, training, and region stabilization.  The surge will eventually end, constabulary operations will be fully handed over to Iraq, and large numbers of troops will come home.  But at least some diminished number of troops will remain in Iraq for a decade, and the Middle East for longer.