Sorry, Barack, You’ve lost Iraq.

From Michael Hirsh at Newsweek.

The U.S. will be entering a strategic partnership with Iraq, much like the strategic partnership that exists with Germany, Japan, and Korea. The UN mandate for Coalition presence in Iraq ends in December 2008. The significance of this partnership is explained.

Most significant of all, the new partnership deal with Iraq, including a status of forces agreement that would then replace the existing Security Council mandate authorizing the presence of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq, will become a sworn obligation for the next president. It will become just another piece of the complex global security framework involving a hundred or so countries with which Washington now has bilateral defense or security cooperation agreements.

This strategic agreement is expected to be in place no later than July 2008. Commenting on how many troops would remain in Iraq, a Pentagon contractor working on the strategic relationship stated,

....the administration is considering new configurations of forces that could reduce troop levels to well under 100,000, perhaps to as few as 60,000, by the time the next president takes office.

While presidential candidates are still looking at Iraq as a quagmire, reality on the ground says Iraq and the U.S. are entering a long-term political, military, economic, and diplomatic relationship that will endure for decades and will ensure a stable Middle East in those decades to come.

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