As McJoan noted on Wednesday, more than half of the Iraqi parliament have signed a bill calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal. They are inviting us to leave.
As AP reported it yesterday:
The bill would require the Iraqi government to seek approval from parliament before it requests an extension of the U.N. mandate for foreign forces to be in Iraq. It also calls for a timetable for the troop withdrawal and a freeze on the size of the foreign forces.
This is democracy in action! It is a triumph of purple fingers. Conservatives should be cheering, right?
Instead, deafening silence.
But for me, the most interesting part of the AP story is this:
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously in November to extend the U.S.-led forces' mandate until the end of 2007. The resolution, however, said the council "will terminate this mandate earlier if requested by the government of Iraq."
Will the Iraqi government make the request? Will the UN honor it?
Chances are this Iraqi parliment bill will probably go nowhere. BushCo would probably exert pressue on the Iraq government to quash it.
But according to the UN Security Council, the mandate contains an upcoming deadline for review:
Responding to a request by the Iraqi Prime Minister, the Security Council today extended the mandate of the multinational force in Iraq until the end of next year, deciding that it should be reviewed at the request of that country’s Government or no later than 15 June 2007.
June 15, 2007. That is a little over a month away.
Has anyone been talking about this? It sounds like a big deal.
Is the Iraqi government going to request the review? Even if they don't, the mandate states that it should be reviewed "no later than" June. What will happen at that review?
And even if Iraqi doesn't request early termination of the mandate, or it is not reviewed in June, it is still set to expire at the end of the year. With BushCo's delaying tactics, we may well still be in Iraq by December.
So what happens then?
There are two deadlines for the UN mandate: June 15 and December 31. Will world resistance to the Iraq invasion and occupation force a showdoen at the UN?