Peace Train Slowly Chugs Ahead

(Yeah, the back problem is still a major pain, so posting is going to be infrequent...)

And now for a pop quiz:

Who said the following: "We must agree on a timed schedule to pull out the troops from Iraq, while at the same time building up the Iraqi forces that will guarantee Iraqi security and this must be supported by a United Nations Security Council decision."

A) Another Democrat, speaking out for Kerry/Feingold resolution?
B) A renegade Republican?
C) Someone seeking to embolden the terrorists and piss off Dick Cheney?
D) None of the above

You'd be wrong if you chose A or B, but I'll give you partial credit for C because I'm sure this is making Cheney stew in his own juices.

It's D, and the quote comes from a draft of the peace package arrived at by "secret talks involving Jalal al-Talabani, the Iraqi President, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, and seven Sunni insurgent groups". This was just so interesting when I read it in the Times Online this morning.

Mr Khalilzad recently told The Times that reconciliation required "a
comprehensive strategy that has political elements, that has security elements,
and that has reintegration elements in it: decommissioning, demobilisation, and
reintegration of these forces."

The draft marks the first time the Iraqi Government has endorsed a fixed timeline for the withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, a key demand of the Sunni insurgency. the document reads.

That certainly doesn't agree with the Administration view of how things should be done does it? This is what Dick Cheney said during his interview with John King of CNN:

KING: Let me jump in -- that one of these points here is, is it wrong -- you say it's wrong to publicly set a timetable. And I understand the argument for that. You'd cue off -- cue the terrorists to what you're going to do. Has the Iraqi government been told, privately, you need to meet certain benchmarks, training your troops, improving security, by a date certain, because the American people are not going to pay for this forever?

CHENEY: No, I think they know full well that we're expecting them to take on more and more responsibility. It's one of the reasons the president went to Baghdad recently. And all of our conversations with them, they know what we're trying to do and they've stepped up to that task and that responsibility. Fact of the matter is that obviously we've lost a lot of people. Wish we hadn't lost anybody. But the heavy casualties are being taken by the Iraqis. There are a lot more Iraqis being -- becoming casualties in this conflict at present, because they are now in a fight.

Again, I come back to the basic proposition. What happens, in the global war on terror, if United Statesates bails out on Iraq? And that's exactly what withdrawal is. You know, you're going to take your troops before the conflict is over with.

You're not going to complete the mission if we follow the Democrats' advice. And, in fact, we will have set up the situation in which the al Qaeda types can win. They have a plan to establish a caliphate that stretches from Spain all the way around to Indonesia, to kick the Americans out of the Middle East, to destroy Israel, to take down most of those regimes in that part of the world. And they will do anything they can to achieve that objective.

But ultimately, what they're betting on is that we don't have the stomach for the fight, and we can not afford to validate that strategy. We can win -- we are winning -- but we've got to stay at it.

The transcript is posted here.

The administration wanted Iraq to be a democratic government; they got what they wanted. The moral is: be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.

So just how will Bush/Cheney handle this? Stay tuned.

Update: I finally checked Daily Kos and there are a couple of diaries here and here, and I'm sure John Kerry and Russ Feingold are smiling snugly, because this sure does sound like their plan, which you can check out here on Feingold's site. Republicans Lewin and probably are somewhat satisfied too; here's Lewin's site, which links to a PDF , which was really slow to load.