Exit Strategy From Iraq Through Iran

This might expand to four in the wake of the Boumediene ruling, but basically there are only three agenda items left for the Bush Administration: get immunity from prosecution for themselves and their telecom partners for warrantless spying, secure a long-term status of forces agreement allowing for permanent bases inside Iraq and essentially a colonial presence, and bomb Iran's suspected nuclear facilities. All three of them are impeachable offenses, contravening major elements of the Constitution, be it the Fourth Amendment, Congress' power to advise and consent on bilateral treaties, or Congress' power to declare war.

And the last two are related.

The reason the White House is so hell-bent on signing a long-term agreement may have less to do with Iraq and more to do with Iran. According to press reports of the ongoing negotiations, the Bush administration is seeking the “power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq.” Ali al Adeeb, a leading member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party, confirmed:

The Americans insist so far that is they who define what is an aggression on Iraq and what is democracy inside Iraq…if we come under aggression we should define it and ask for help.

The administration’s request would seemingly allow the U.S. to brand Iran as an enemy of Iraq and attack Iran in the name of defending Iraq pursuant to a legal obligation under the status of forces agreement.

Iraqi leaders are resisting the status of forces agreement because they want to maintain their own sovereignty, but also because they don't want to become a staging ground for an attack on Iran, which would almost certainly result in an overthrow of the government and total chaos. It would also put thousands of our troops at risk.

We're seeing the same rhetoric used to hype up the Iraqi invasion (so much for regretting all that incendiary language), and the pressure from the warhawks inside the Administration has grown more intense, despite the conclusion of intelligence estimates that Iran's nuclear program is dormant. Just the very act of "keeping the military option on the table" in speeches damages diplomatic efforts. It emboldens the hardliners in Iran and raises tensions. Of course, that is probably the point. What's scariest is that the Administration's version of Roy Hobbs has come off the bench for a final trip at the plate.

David Addington, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is winning on virtually every battle he is fighting -- from not moving forward on new legal protocols that would be more internationally palatable on combat detainee rights to shelving the Law of the Seas Treaty ratification. But they say that the level of tension in the White House over Iran is also growing -- and the diplomatic game plan that before was dominant seems to have deteriorated significantly -- particularly since the departure of former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns and the firing of Admiral William Fallon.

David Wurmser allegedly (though he does deny it) said that Vice President Cheney felt it important to "tie the President's hands" when it came to Iran and to generate an event that would undermine the diplomatic track -- the worry now is that the crowd in power is really talking about tying the next President's hands. . .tying perhaps Barack Obama's hands.

This really could be cooking -- and I think it's important for White House watchers to realize that the folks we thought had knocked back the neocons are themselves losing leverage again.

Generating that event is certainly what's at work in the status of forces agreement. One militia member who happens to have some tie to the Quds Force - there are certainly some - will be the impetus for attack.

That's why the group most likely to keep us out of a third Bush war right now is not the Democratic opposition, sadly, but the Iraqi government.