The Foreign Policy Friday News Dumps

I told you there was a lot of news, right? First, North Korea called Bush's bluff and won.

President Bush is set to remove North Korea from the U.S. list of terrorist-sponsoring nations as early as Saturday in an end-of-term bid to save a deal to eliminate the secretive communist nation's nuclear weapons program, State Department officials said Friday.

The move was being finalized Friday after consultations with U.S. ally Japan, which opposes the action, and what appears to have been a fierce internal debate within the Bush administration, said the officials, who requested anonymity because the announcement hasn't been made yet.

The most interesting part of this is that Bush ALREADY AGREED to take North Korea off the terror list. When Pyongyang actually asked for the US to hold up their end of the deal, it set off a fiery internal debate. So obviously they initially planned not to do it.

Obviously a denuclearized North Korea is preferable, and if China is involved in the verification process, it could lead to further global cooperation. But this is just a window into how the White House operates. And, it shows their weakness at the end of the regime, as NORTH KOREA can twist their arm.

So can Iraq.

Al-Maliki said the U.S. had made major concessions, including agreeing to pull U.S. forces back to their bases by the end of June and to a full withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011.

President Bush had steadfastly refused for years to set a timetable for a troop withdrawal, saying that should depend on security conditions on the ground. Iraqi politicians say they cannot sell the deal to their war-weary public without a timeline for the end of the U.S. presence.

However, one senior U.S. official, close to the talks, confirmed Friday that the Americans had agreed to the June and 2011 dates.

The official, who requested anonymity because the talks are ongoing, said the United States still believes that security conditions should determine the withdrawal schedule but that Washington can live with the language in the draft deal.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has signed off on this deal, but only if it's ratified by the Parliament, so the US might need to make even more concessions.

I'd like Maliki to be the new Speaker of the House. He apparently understands how to deal with bullies.