Bush hands Iraq to the Insurgency

So much for our ‘stay the course’ president and his soul-seeing eyes. According to Newsweek [1] Maliki is proposing the following:

A timetable for withdrawal of occupation troops from Iraq. Amnesty for all insurgents who attacked U.S. and Iraqi military targets. Release of all security detainees from U.S. and Iraqi prisons. Compensation for victims of coalition military operations.

Those sound like the demands of some of the insurgents themselves, and in fact they are. But they're also key clauses of a national reconciliation plan drafted by new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who will unveil it Sunday. The provisions will spark sharp debate in Iraq—but the fiercest opposition is likely to come from Washington, which has opposed any talk of timetables, or of amnesty for insurgents who have attacked American soldiers.

Interesting, but I call B.S. on the implication that there will be any retaliation from Washington. In fact, I think Maliki is giving Team Chimpy such a gift that they must have worked out a deal beforehand.

Iraq is an unmitigated disaster, perhaps the worst foreign policy blunder in global history. And the GOP own it. They control all three houses of government and are therefore stuck with any policy decision arising from the last 5 years. While their disaster-inflated popularity erodes around them, Iraq starts stinking more and more like a big honkin’ fart they just can’t run away from.

I think BushCo realized sometime about 6 months ago that the war was hopeless and are desperate for any way out of it that allows Bush to claim ‘mission accomplished’. The only way for this to happen is if the Iraq government proves its ability to maintain a unified coalition. And this can’t happen without a certain degree of appeasement. So I would imagine that the White House is unlikely to say boo about this unless the media manages to call them out on it. In which case, resistance will be merely a rhetorical token with a private wink to Maliki.