http://www.buffalonews.com/180/story/73237.html#Is it just me or is this a HUGE story? It appears the bill will pass, and if the US does not abide by it, then we ARE there as a hostile occupying force against the wishes of the democratically elected government B*sh is so fond of crowing about.
Shouldn't this be the top story on tonight's broadcast news?
BAGHDAD — A majority of Iraq’s parliament has signed a proposed bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels.
The bill would create a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some Democratic lawmakers in the United States have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament’s approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of this year.
“We haven’t asked for the immediate withdrawal of multinational forces; we asked that we should build our security forces and make them qualified and at that point there would be a withdrawal,” said Baha al- Araji, a parliamentarian allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters drafted the bill. “But no one can accept the occupation of this country.”
In both Iraq and the United States, there is deepening frustration among lawmakers and the public over President Bush’s troop build-up, a policy that has yet to prevent widespread killing in Iraq. At the same time, Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are dispatching their emissaries in an urgent trans- Atlantic gambit to shore up support.