Re: SC54

Move On. ORG message:

Dear MoveOn member,

Have you seen the headlines? President Bush is quietly negotiating an agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep our troops there indefinitely--an agreement that could include permanent bases and a massive military presence for years!1 Bush is trying to tie the hands of the next administration to keep us in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

This is a pivotal moment—the agreement is still in the planning stages and if we don't act now, we could be stuck in Iraq for decades.

It's critical to push Democrats into opposing this. Right now, President Bush's troop reduction plan has fooled some people into thinking we're headed toward an exit in Iraq—but this move makes it clear he's literally committing the U.S. to a war with no end. It's an extreme policy and Congress can stop it—but whether they do depends on how loud we are..............

.................News reports indicate that the White House is negotiating an agreement with al-Maliki that could include permanent bases, a massive military presence in the Middle East, and dibs for U.S. investors, which "could provide a huge windfall if Iraq can achieve enough stability to exploit its vast oil resources."3 Talking Points Memo summed up the agreement best, saying:

"That means that during Bush's last year in office, the administration will work out the terms of the U.S.'s stay in Iraq in order to, at the very least, seriously constrain the next administration's options for ending the U.S. presence."

Already Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senators Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama have begun to draw a line in the sand over this, saying that permanent bases are unacceptable. 5 But opposing permanent bases isn't enough. Democrats have to act to stop Bush's move to force us into an endless occupation in Iraq.

An agreement like the one that Bush is negotiating has implications beyond Iraq. Bush administration officials have indicated that a long-term presence in Iraq is necessary to deter what they call "Iranian mischief" in the region6—meaning that an ongoing commitment in Iraq could also pave the way to an escalation of war with Iran.

News of this agreement broke the very same day that the New York Times reported that the Bush administration is giving up on the benchmarks it had set for the Iraqi government.7 Giving up on these benchmarks means that there is no pressure on the Iraqi government to create political reconciliation. Combine that with news of this agreement, and we run the risk of having our troops bogged down in Iraq for decades.

This moment is critical and your voice is urgently needed. The agreement that President Bush is negotiating is still in the planning stages and if enough of us speak out we can get Congress to block him from making yet another reckless foreign policy mistake—one that could cost thousands of American and Iraqi lives.

We need to send Congress a message they can't ignore: Block an endless war in Iraq now—before it's too late.............

Is already too late, the troops and bases will stay until the oil is gone, or, a revolution of angst in the middle east against the US forces us to leave, or, the US economy collapses and China decides its not in its best interest to fund our nation's debt anymore.