From Charlie Savage at The Boston Globe:

President Bush's plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq's security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval, according to legal specialists.

Read the whole thing. This is bound to be the big inter-branch brawl of the summer.

Somebody had to do it. And hooray to the Center for Public Integrity and Fund for Independence in Journalism for doing it.

The groups counted and documented every Bush administration false statement made in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Every one. It was a bit like counting snowflakes, to be sure, but here's what they came up with:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

Or there's this, if you'd like a visualization:

You can relive every moment of the war hype on the site by watching videos, going over every false statement, and more. Remember Dick Cheney's "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."? And President Bush's "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories."? The project even comes replete with a search function.

(Unfortunately, CPI's site seems to be groaning under the pressure of interest in the project, so you'll have to be patient. It's been loading slowly this morning.)

And the White House's response to the study was as expected:

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

2012, 2020, forever. Whatever the terms hashed out between the administration and Nouri al-Maliki's government, the administration has said that they won't have to consult Congress to finish the deal.

As we reported back in November, that wouldn't be unusual, as these types of agreements (called Status of Forces Agreements) are typically handled solely by the executive branch. It's not a "formal" treaty, the kind the Constitution dictates must be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. And White House war adviser Douglas Lute has made it clear that the negotiations "will lead to the status of a formal treaty."

But Congress is maneuvering to make sure that they get a say. Today, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) will introduce the Iraq Strategic Agreement Review Act of 2008, which would require the administration to consult with Congress on the agreement and withhold funds for the agreement if it did not come in the form of a formal treaty. “We simply cannot allow the Administration to finalize an agreement that could lead to permanent bases in Iraq and other major economic and political commitments without Congressional consultations and approval," she says in a statement on the bill.

Last month, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) introduced a similar bill in the Senate, which would also withhold funds for any agreement that wasn't a formal treaty. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is as of now the sole co-sponsor. The bill was referred to the Senate foreign relations committee. It seems likely that Senate Republicans will put their vaunted obstruction powers to work on this one.

Update: Here's the text of the bill.

Back in November, President Bush and Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki hashed out the principles for the two countries' "enduring relationship": a long-term American troop presence in Iraq and preferential treatment for American investments in return for a guarantee of security for the Iraqis. It was a deal we summarized at the time as "U.S. To Stay In Iraq Forever."

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when the two sides sit down at the table, the definition of "enduring" raises some eyebrows.

The Iraqi defense minister, Abdul Qadir, is in Washington, D.C. to continue work on defining the American commitment in Iraq. A formal agreement will emerge by July, The New York Times reports. As TPM alum Spencer Ackerman reported here, such an agreement would not require Congress' approval, but would require the Iraqi parliament's OK.

So... the numbers. Qadir tells the Times that 2012 and 2020 are his target dates -- for full internal security and security against external threats, respectively. What that means for the size of our "enduring presence" isn't so clear:

“According to our calculations and our timelines, we think that from the first quarter of 2009 until 2012 we will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country,” Mr. Qadir said in an interview on Monday, conducted in Arabic through an interpreter.

“In regard to the borders, regarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020,” he added.

He offered no specifics on a timeline for reducing the number of American troops in Iraq.

The Times' notes that Qadir's projections were slightly less dire last year, when he projected full security by 2018. But if there's anything the Iraq War has taught us, it's to take government prognostications very lightly.

Remember all that stuff about benchmarks? You know, measurements of progress by the Iraqi government? Well, that was last year.

There's a new catchphrase in town: "Iraqi solutions." And it means that while the Iraqis might have failed to accomplish just about all the goals the U.S. set, that's OK, and you gotta just roll with it and let the Iraqis do their thing.

Here's how it goes, from The Washington Post:

From Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to Army privates and aid workers, officials are expressing their willingness to stand back and help Iraqis develop their own answers. "We try to come up with Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems," said Stephen Fakan, the leader of a provincial reconstruction team with U.S. troops in Fallujah.

In many cases -- particularly on the political front -- Iraqi solutions bear little resemblance to the ambitious goals for 2007 that Bush laid out in his speech to the nation last Jan. 10. "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis," he pledged. "Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year . . . the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution."...

To Crocker, the meaning of "Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems" is "blindingly obvious. Iraq has got a government. It's got a system. It's got provincial governments. It's got a military and a police. And it has leaders of all of these things who increasingly take themselves seriously as leaders."

The New York Times noted this reduction in expectations last year, but it didn't have the requisite branding. Now it does. Some, however, are unimpressed with the rollout. The Post quotes a retired British general as saying that this supposed "dawning of reality" is a "cynical use of language" used "to camouflage past errors."

Whether it's realism or cynicism you can decide. An Army official favorably quotes Lawrence of Arabia as proof that this is an old, tried solution: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly."

Unfortunately, it's that "tolerable" part that's the sticking point.

The Ramones once implored us not to fight on Christmas. But the Turkish general staff doesn't like the Ramones. Nor, to understate matters, does it like the Kurdish terror group known as the PKK. With the approval of the U.S. to violate Iraqi airspace, Turkish warplanes and invasion forces have killed an estimated 150 Kurds in the last week-plus, according to the Turkish military. The New York Times:

Turkey’s assertions came as Kurdish and American officials said that Turkish jets crossed into Iraqi airspace again on Tuesday, in what American officials said was the fourth such flight over the border in two weeks.

Turkish officials did not comment on claims that it flew into Iraq on Tuesday, but confirmed that it had carried out an air and ground operation early Tuesday on its side of the border in southeastern Turkey. An army statement said five rebels were killed, including two women, part of a rebel group preparing an attack.

None of these raids could have occurred without the support of the United States, which controls Iraqi airspace. At the risk of inducing strategic vertigo, here are the stakes. Turkey is a crucial NATO ally, and the major launching point for all U.S. air cargo into Iraq. It fought a war against the PKK in the 1990s, since it thinks that the strength of the PKK bolsters the desire for independence in Turkey's heavily-Kurdish southeast. Plus it says to George W. Bush that the PKK are terrorists -- rather truthfully -- the U.S. is fighting its own war on terrorists, it's all one fight, etc. So we're helping them. And how!

Rear Adm. Greg Smith, director of communications for the American-led forces in Iraq, said Turkey had notified American officials in advance of the latest raid, as is customary, telling them it was a reconnaissance flight, not a strike mission.

“They tell us where they are going and what their mission is,” he said. “The first three missions were all identified as strike missions. They said their intentions were to go and drop ordnance and they told us that at the time.”

“On this occasion they told us it was a reconnaissance mission,” he continued. However, he confirmed that while the Americans monitor all such Turkish flights, they would not necessarily know if, having crossed the border, the Turkish pilots changed their mission from reconnaissance to bombing.

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As is now world-famous, last week, guards for Blackwater shot down Hentish, a dog living at The New York Times's Baghdad compound. With the single pull of a trigger, the already P.R.-troubled security company forced the American people to choose whether they love dogs more than they hate reporters.

But don't send Blackwater to the pound just yet. According to Eason Jordan, former CNN exec and current potentate of IraqSlogger, the Times bureau is home to many a snarling canine. One even took a bite out of Jordan himself:

It was a stunning, painful sneak attack that landed me in the emergency room of the U.S. Army's hospital in Baghdad's Green Zone.

The attacker: Scratch, one of The New York Times' Baghdad bureau dogs, whose vicious bite opened three deep gashes in my right hand, sending blood spewing in all directions.

I'm a proud dog owner, and if Blackwater or anyone else messes with Kingsley, I'm violating D.C.'s handgun ban. But it's hard not to sympathize with what Jordan writes:

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According to internal State Department cables obtained by TPMmuckraker, the State Department has slated two Diplomatic Security officials who oversee private-security contractors guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan for salary bonuses. The optional bonuses, called Senior Foreign Service Performance Pay Awards, come months after administrative investigations have raised questions about the propriety of State's relationship with security contractors like Blackwater.

In late October, Richard Griffin, head of the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, resigned after an internal State Department review of contractor relationships implicitly rebuked the office for insufficient oversight. That lack of oversight contributed to the September shooting deaths of over a dozen Iraqi civilians by Blackwater security guards at Nisour Square, and has inflamed Iraqis, who view State Department guards Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp as having a license to kill without legal consequence. Yet shortly after Griffin's resignation, ABC News reported that two key deputies who worked closely with the security contractors, Kevin Barry and Justine Sincavage, received quiet promotions. One outraged State official told ABC, "What does it say when State promotes the two people into DS' most senior positions, when if they had properly managed the programs under the responsibility, we wouldn't be in this mess?"

That question could also be asked of their recent pay bonuses.

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General Lute said on Monday we'll negotiate them. Ali al-Dabbagh wouldn't rule them out. But at the White House press gaggle today, Dana Perino denied the Bush administration's interest in long-term U.S. military bases in Iraq. From AFP:

"We do not seek permanent bases in Iraq," spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters after Lieutenant General Douglas Lute said Monday that the flashpoint issue would be part of negotiations to decide the future of US troops in Iraq.

Yawn. This standard formulation is nothing new for the administration. Zalmay Khalilzad, for instance, used the same words as far back as 2005, and the Iraq Study Group still considered the statement less than categorical. After all: what would we do if Iraq just happened to offer us open-ended access to certain military installations, or access renewable in x-number of years? Very, very rarely will a host country deny the U.S. a re-up on a military base: it took the Philippines nearly 100 years to get us out of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base.

There's a sense in which our presence at those bases wasn't "permanent," and another in which we didn't "seek" permanence. But it's one in which the literal meaning has to be interpreted in direct contradiction to the events and issues those words describe. Luckily, the American Philological Society calls that interpretation a "Perino."

Ali al-Dabbagh doesn't foresee the Iraqi parliament rejecting the upcoming long-term security assurance President Bush intends to extend Iraq. He must not have talked to Saleh Mutlaq.

Mutlaq is the somewhat dyspeptic head of the smaller of two Sunni blocs in parliament. Both blocs exhibit profound distrust for Nouri al-Maliki. But Mutlaq is even less accommodating, and he's closer to the "Sunni extremist" whom Dabbagh expects will object to the deal. Sure enough, Mutlaq objects to the deal.

Via IraqSlogger (sub. req.), Mutlaq told the newspaper Kul al- 'Iraq that the Iraqi people -- meaning his constituency -- would see the deal as "a U.S. imposition." The only way to avoid that perception would be... if the U.S. set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq. That's clearly at cross-purposes with the point of the security deal.

So cross Mutlaq off from the list of the deal's supporters. The question now becomes what kind of coalition Mutlaq can cobble together to stop the deal.

President Bush might not require Congressional approval for the upcoming U.S.-Iraq security agreement. But al-Dabbagh said the Maliki government will need to secure a blessing for the deal from the Iraqi parliament. And even though the deal will cover a U.S. military presence for years to come, Dabbagh doesn't expect any parliamentary turbulence -- let alone refusal.

The final arrangement, which the U.S. expects to reach in July 2008, "definitely needs an approval" from parliament, Dabbagh told TPMmuckraker. That's because Article 58, Section 4 of the Iraqi constitution ensures the parliament must approve "international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority."

Jason Sigger of Armchair Generalist asked whether Maliki could get parliamentary approval for a deal perceived to pave the way for an indefinite U.S. presence. After all, in May, 144 of 275 parliamentarians, led by Moqtada al-Sadr's faction, called for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops. Dabbagh replied that "not only Shia extremists, but also Sunni extremists ... are going to object." But he didn't forsee a problem. "[The] U.S. people should have confidence that the Iraqi people are accepting this without any pressure," he said. "It is their choice to have a lasting agreement."

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Ali al-Dabbagh, the official spokesman for the government of Iraq, refused to rule out granting the U.S. military permanent bases in Iraq during next year's negotiations over the shape of a long-term U.S.-Iraq security agreement.

TPMmuckraker had the opportunity to speak with Dabbagh through a blogger conference call set up by the Department of Defense. He declined to speak with any specificity about long-term basing rights for U.S. troops or about Iraq's desired size for a residual U.S. presence. "We are not speaking of permanent bases yet. It is too early to speak of this," he told TPMmuckraker. The level of U.S. troops in Iraq in the future, he said, should be linked to "the status of Iraq's security forces. As long as Iraqi forces are ready, then the number will diminish."

I followed up by asking if the Iraqis would rule out granting the U.S. permanent bases in the upcoming negotiations. He said that discussion on the issue has not begun in Iraq. "This is not an easy issue, having bases here in Iraq," Dabbagh said. "It will be highly debated, but at the end it is a presence. Is it permanent, or for how many years -- five, ten -- this is an issue that is going to be discussed with the political parties," and with the United States, to reach "a common view." He added that "it is very difficult to predict right now, what level of permanence" Iraq will ultimately grant the U.S. military.

Asked by a Pentagon public affairs officer if he had any message for U.S. troops who had served or are still serving in Iraq, Dabbagh replied, "In the end, Iraqis will never forget such sacrifice." That's surely true. After all, that sacrifice isn't going to end.

On Monday, commenting on President Bush's forthcoming long-term security guarantee to Iraq, top White House war adviser Douglas Lute said, "We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress." In other words, Bush can commit the U.S. to protecting the security of Iraq -- including, as Lute said, enduring U.S. bases in Iraq and a residual troop presence -- without Congressional approval. Can he?

"That reflects historical practice," says Peggy McGuinness, a former State Department official and current law professor at the University of Missouri.

To boil down an arcane legal debate to a thick constitutional sauce, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, says that the President can enter into treaties with foreign countries "provided two thirds of the Senators present concur." But not every foreign agreement is what McGuiness calls a "capital-T Treaty." Security guarantees, and particularly garrisoning agreements for U.S. troops abroad -- a category called a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA -- are not usually treated by the executive branch as capital-T Treaties. Historically, Congress doesn't insist that the executive does, and the Supreme Court has never ruled that all such arrangements require Senate advice and consent. As a result of this historical practice, "a SOFA is usually a purely executive agreement," McGuiness explains.

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The reactions to President Bush's forthcoming long-term security guarantees to Iraq just keep on piling in. Here's Jim Manley, spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the Democratic leader in the Senate. He's reacting in particular to General Lute's statement that Bush doesn't need Congressional buy-in for any security deal with Maliki:

"Nearly six years into the war, the President still fails to understand that 'go-it-alone' is a not a successful strategy. Just as he ignored facts and the world community in getting us into this war and is ignoring the demands of Congress and the American people to get us out, President Bush is now trying to unilaterally negotiate an agreement with Iraq on security -- an area [where] the President has absolutely zero credibility."

Speaking of going it alone, it's worth noting that with the end to the United Nations Security Council mandate for the occupation -- which Maliki heralded in a televised address -- the remaining members of the Coalition of the Willing will no longer have a legal basis for staying in Iraq. After 2008, it's just us and the Iraqis. (And the insurgents. And the Mahdi Army. And the other militias. And whatever al-Qaeda in Iraq remains.)

It may not be the most compelling argument to an Iraqi civilian, but it surely resonates within the private-security industry. One of Blackwater's competitors, the London-based ArmorGroup, anticipates a lackluster quarterly profit report -- something the company blames, in part, on the Iraqi government's hostility to private security contractors after the Nisour Square shootings.

ArmorGroup International PLC, a British private security company, warned Tuesday that profits will fall this year because of the fallout from competitor Blackwater Worldwide's involvement in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians.

The news sent the company's share price plunging 40 percent on the London Stock Exchange.

ArmorGroup also announced that David Seaton was stepping down as chief executive, effective immediately, as the company reorganizes.

"The award and mobilization of a number of major contracts in Iraq has been severely affected by the Blackwater incident in Baghdad on 16 September," the company said in a trading update to the London Stock Exchange.

Imagine that: shooting civilians is bad for business.

Yesterday, General Douglas Lute, a top Iraq adviser to President Bush, said that the administration didn't require Senate ratification for its forthcoming long-term security guarantee to the Iraqis. It's unclear whether that's true, and I'll tell you more as soon as I know it. But even if it is, the Iraqi constitution stipulates that Iraq's parliament has to ratify any such agreement. And the Iraqi parliament is a lot more hostile to the idea of hosting U.S. troops indefinitely than the U.S. Senate is.

Take a look at Article 58, Section 4 of the Iraqi constitution. It stipulates that the Iraqi parliament shall ratify "international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority." Whether or not President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki can finagle the deal so that it's not a treaty -- as Lute suggested yesterday -- it most certainly is an "agreement."

And it's hard to see the votes for a two-thirds parliamentary majority.

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If you're like most Americans and most Iraqis, chances are you think a normal state of affairs between the two nations is not one in which, say, U.S. troops walk the streets of Baghdad. Well, all you've done is prove your unfitness to serve in the Bush administration. Today, the administration has spun the forthcoming permanent U.S. troop presence as amounting to a "normalization" of relations.

Here's the White House fact sheet on the deal:

[T]his Declaration is the first step in a three-step process that will normalize U.S.-Iraqi relations in a way which is consistent with Iraq's sovereignty and will help Iraq regain its rightful status in the international community – something both we and the Iraqis seek.

And here's National Security Council staffer Brett McGurk:

“It sends a signal to the region … that the United States is committed to Iraq for the long term -- that we’re not packing up and leaving,” McGurk said. “But that nature of our commitment over time will transition, as it should, and that we will have a normalized, bilateral relationship with Iraq.”

Credit the administration with a sudden candor. For the first time in four years, it's admitting that its conception of a normal Iraq is one in which the U.S. military operates there forever and ever and ever. It's not quite 6 p.m. Are there any other conspiracy theories sure to arouse anti-American sentiment in the Middle East that the administration would like to confirm before quitting time?

Here's the full text of the joint Bush-Maliki agreement on principles for a long-term U.S. security commitment to Iraq. There's some hilarious obfuscatorese on the question of bases and troop levels. ("Support will be provided consistent with mechanisms and arrangements to be established in the bilateral cooperation agreements mentioned herein" -- in context, I promise, that translates to "let's worry about defining the U.S. troop presence in the final agreement.") But take a look at this key economics "principle":

Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq.

In fairness, it's the job of the U.S. in bilateral negotiations to try to win the most favorable investment environment for American business. But that's not so difficult when your military is keeping your negotiating partners, you know, alive. Already $6 billion worth of Iraq contracts are under criminal review. How much more Iraqi business could flow to Americans? It's hard to say, but it looks like Stuart Bowen will have a long, long career ahead of him.

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Whatever rationale the Bush administration cooks up for our soon-to-be-permanent presence in Iraq, chances are it won't compare to Nouri al-Maliki's. Maliki went on Iraqi TV today to say that the joint agreement reached today with President Bush actually means that the U.S. presence in Iraq is... wait for it... coming to an end!

"The United States has promised that the multinational forces will stay under a United Nations mandate only until the end of 2008," Mr Maliki said in a televised address.

"The final extension for the multinational forces under the UN mandate will finish in 2008."

Mr Maliki said Iraq was not a threat to any of its neighbours as it was now a "democratic state".

"It is no longer a danger to the interests of the region. We are saying frankly that there is no justification for Iraq to stay under Chapter VII. All the justification created by the former regime is now over," he said.

Mr Maliki also said that Iraq had reached the stage where it did not need multinational forces and that the country should be allowed to become a "normal state".

Now, given the crippling legacy of U.N. sanctions during the 1990s, the expiration of a U.N. security mandate has an emotional resonance for Iraqis that Maliki is rather cynically exploiting. Left apparently unstated is that after the U.N. mandate expires, Maliki will personally broker a new "justification" for the U.S.'s Mesopotamian excursion. What kind of government blatantly misrepresents to its public the implications of its actions? Why, the kind of government to which we bequeath long-term security guarantees, of course!

Could Congress stop a Bush administration-brokered deal to garrison U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely? Not according to General Douglas Lute, the so-called "war czar." Here's Lute at today's gaggle:

Q General, will the White House seek any congressional input on this?

GENERAL LUTE: In the course of negotiations like this, it's not -- it is typical that there will be a dialogue between congressional leaders at the negotiating table, which will be run out of the Department of State. We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress.

Q Is the purpose of avoiding the treaty avoiding congressional input?

GENERAL LUTE: No, as I said, we have about a hundred agreements similar to the one envisioned for the U.S. and Iraq already in place, and the vast majority of those are below the level of a treaty.

Lute said the White House intends to conclude negotiations on an enduring security guarantee with the Maliki government in July. Permanent military bases and residual troop levels will be specified in the final accord, he said.

Oh, for the halcyon days when the Bush administration saw fit to deny that it sought a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq. Let's take a look at what senior administration officials said way back when, shall we?

President George W. Bush, April 13, 2004:

"As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation and neither does America."

then-U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, August 14, 2005:

"We do not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. Our goal is to help Iraq stand on its own feet, to be able to look after its own security, and to do what we can to help achieve that goal."

Condoleezza Rice, April 4, 2006, quoted by Agence France-Presse (Via Nexis):

Rice would not say when all U.S. forces would return home and did not directly answer Rep. Steven Rothman, a Democrat, when he asked, "Will the bases be permanent or not?"

"I would think that people would tell you, `We're not seeking permanent bases really pretty much anywhere in the world these days.' We are, in fact, in the process of removing base structure from a lot of places," Rice replied.

Tony Snow, June 15, 2006:

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So it begins. After years of obfuscation and denial on the length of the U.S.'s stay in Iraq, the White House and the Maliki government have released a joint declaration of "principles" for "friendship and cooperation." Apparently President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the declaration during a morning teleconference.

Naturally, the declaration is euphemistic, and doesn't refer explicitly to any U.S. military presence.

-- Iraq's leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America, and we seek an enduring relationship with a democratic Iraq. We are ready to build that relationship in a sustainable way that protects our mutual interests, promotes regional stability, and requires fewer Coalition forces.

-- In response, this Declaration is the first step in a three-step process that will normalize U.S.-Iraqi relations in a way which is consistent with Iraq's sovereignty and will help Iraq regain its rightful status in the international community – something both we and the Iraqis seek. The second step is the renewal of the Multinational Force-Iraq's Chapter VII United Nations mandate for a final year, followed by the third step, the negotiation of the detailed arrangements that will codify our bilateral relationship after the Chapter VII mandate expires.

A "democratic Iraq" here means the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The current political arrangement will receive U.S. military protection against coups or any other internal subversion. That's something the Iraqi government wants desperately: not only is it massively unpopular, even among Iraqi Shiites, but the increasing U.S.-Sunni security cooperation strikes the Shiite government -- with some justification -- as a recipe for a future coup.

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What? Permanent U.S. bases in Iraq? I've never heard of anything so absurd! Why, you -- you -- you conspiracy theorist! How can you be so shrill, so irresponsible, so, so, so...

Oh, wait.

Iraq's government is prepared to offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq and preferential treatment for American investments in return for an American guarantee of long-term security including defense against internal coups, The Associated Press learned Monday.

The proposal, described to the AP by two senior officials familiar with the issue, is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like, once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence.

Make no mistake: this is Nouri al-Maliki offering the U.S. a permanent presence in return for guaranteeing the security of his government. (Would-be PM Ayad Allawi can't make President Bush a counteroffer as good as that.) In exchange for a platform for the indefinite projection of American power throughout the Middle East, the Bush Administration probably considers protection for Maliki and his coterie to be a small price to pay. No wonder the negotiation of a mandate for foreign troops in Iraq at the United Nations -- where this deal would begin to take shape -- is one of Bush's new post-benchmark benchmarks.

Who could have seen this coming?