Below The Beltway

The Iraqi Government continues to balk at the Bush Administration’s proposals for a Status of Forces Agreement:
AMMAN, June 13 (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday talks with the United States on a new long-term security pact were deadlocked because of U.S. demands that infringed Iraq’s sovereignty.
“We have reached a deadlock, because […]

One of the reasons that negotiations between the United States and Iraq over the basing of American troops have seemingly fallen apart seems to be that the Iraqis themselves are saying no to American demands they find too intrusive:
BAGHDAD, June 10 — High-level negotiations over the future role of the U.S. military in Iraq […]

It looks like the permanent basing negotiations with the Iraqis that are I wrote about the other day aren’t going anywhere after all:
The Bush administration is conceding for the first time that the United States may not finish a complex security agreement with Iraq before President Bush leaves office.
Faced with stiff Iraqi opposition, it is […]

Andrew Sullivan links to this rather disturbing report on negotiations between the United States and Iraq over future U.S. military bases in the country:
The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis […]

As a piece of literature, history, and autobiography, Scott McClellan’s media attention grabbing book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception isn’t great or even good. As someone who loves reading books, I found myself skipping over entire chapters with ease to get to the part that mattered simply because […]

A new Senate report says that the White House wasn’t exactly candid when it came to the true extent of the threat that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed in 2002-03:
President Bush and his top aides repeatedly exaggerated what they knew about the threat from Iraqi nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as the administration pressed its case […]

As most people who have followed politics since the 1980s know, Bob Dole doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being a nice guy.
He’s got a mean streak in him that showed itself in public, most memorably, when he unloaded on then Vice-President George H.W. Bush during the 1988 Republican Presidential race:
Dole made a more serious […]

As usual, Peggy Noonan nails it:
the purpose of the book is a serious one. Mr. McClellan attempts to reveal and expose what he believes, what he came to see as, an inherent dishonesty and hypocrisy within a hardened administration. It is a real denunciation.
He believes the invasion of Iraq was “a serious strategic blunder,” that […]

Just so you know, it isn’t your job to go to Iraq and convert everyone to Christianity:
BAGHDAD, May 29 — The U.S. military suspended a Marine on Thursday for distributing coins quoting the Gospel to Sunni Muslims, an incident that has enraged Iraqis who view it as the latest example of American disrespect for Islam.
The […]

An interesting exchange from last night’s Anderson Cooper 360:

This much is true; during the lead-up to the war, there were several segments of the media that were, quite obviously, in the tank for the war. Judith Miller at The New York Times was one. The entire Editorial Board of the Washington Post was another. The […]