WI: Iraqi Parliament Lets the United States Keep Bases After 2011

What if the Iraqi Parliament does allow for the 58 bases left in Iraq after American withdrawal in 2011?

We could have gotten a executive agreement on troop immunity the way we are likely about to get with the current Iraqi government, but parliamentary immunity was a bar too high without actually doing real pushing to make it happen because Iran was tossing its full weight against it.

Obama wanted out before the election or at least wanted the appearance we were out. We after the election returned 100 SF to Iraq after the election to work with their SF.

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A US soldier in 2010 after a joint U.S./Iraqi raid in Anbar taking down a Islamic State of Iraq training camp on the Iraq/Syria border.

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Al-Baghdadi probably would be dead in 2011 as they wouldn't have needed the WH's ok for a raid or drone strike when we tracked him down. After that the butterflies are huge.

We never had any intention to leave 58 bases. The real question was how many troops. The military wanted 17K, Hillary wanted 10K, team Obama were hard to pin down, but they were willing to consider for a time early in the Summer 2.5K-5K, but started backing away from that.
 
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Greenville

Banned
I'll put my take on this. If there are about 10,000 American forces relocated to bases in Iraq, they are able to prevent ISIS from entering major cities in the country with air strikes alone. It remains isolated in Syria and is under attack by American forces sooner.
 
Wasn't there some stick that American soldiers would be liable under Iraqi law or something?

That the Pentagon didn't want and since it was politically good for Maliki the US packed ship and left.
 
Wasn't there some stick that American soldiers would be liable under Iraqi law or something?

That the Pentagon didn't want and since it was politically good for Maliki the US packed ship and left.

Obama knew what he couldn't get from the Iraqi parliament on troop immunity (not without a major effort could America do what Bush did of getting their parliament to provide immunity) and he knew there were other means to get troop immunity like Executive Agreement. Obama negotiated his way out of Iraq as the goal of the talks.

Iraqi politicians backed into a corner on a Status of Forces Agreement?

Just know we have 7K troops there now without parliamentary immunity. A new SOFA is under talks, but the immunity part will most likely be left to a Executive Agreement with the rest being signed on by the parliament.

The 2008-2011 SOFA had Iraqi parliamentary immunity, but Bush actually worked with and called their leaders to make the highest level of national political support for immunity happened.

Obama actually argued to Iraqi leaders in 2008 before the election they should scuttle the 2008 SOFA deal in talks because it needed to be a treaty in the US in Obama's view so he argued so 2/3rds of Senators needed to sign on which wasn't going to happen in the political climate of the time.
 
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What if the Iraqi Parliament does allow for the 58 bases left in Iraq after American withdrawal in 2011?

Nervously he asks:

What about those of us who remember 2011 Iraq as a place where the only unifying factor in society was the pathological hatred of Western soldiers in general and Americans above all else?

What about the instant Iraqi - and indeed Arab - culture hero status of the bloke who threw his shoe at President Bush during a press conference? Even the Iraqi President who was only in power because of the US led military effort publicly and privately condemned the US presence.

The war - and I really do seem to remember a war - was not over, and American troops were bullet/IED magnets as it was reported. I particularly remember reports that US patrols in Baghdad to try to calm the place down were eventually cancelled as too dangerous. As soon as the US troops stopped patrolling the situation calmed down a lot. Not totally, but dramatically all the same.

Discussions of this subject never mention the war. I am trying to avoid Fawlty Towers flashbacks here. Yes General Petreus paid - bribed - the Iraqi Sunni's enough for them to stop shooting at his men, but the Shiites religious militias didn't. Or at least that is the way I remember it being reported.

Was the MSM just making up the war or is this site full of Iraq war vets who remember it differently enough that staying seems like something other than a way to keep a steady stream of flag draped coffins coming home?
 
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