Bbbbut...they hate us!

Baghdad, Aug 30, (VOI)- Iraqi Foreign Minster Hoshyar Zibari said on Thursday an expanded conference for Iraq’s neighboring countries is to convene in Baghdad in early September, unveiling that Iraq is seeking a long-term security agreement with the U.S. next year once the U.N. mandate given to the Multi-National Forces’ presence in the country was over.

“Iraq is currently making preparations for a meeting that will include Iraq’s neighbors, U.N. Security Council permanent members and G8 on the experts’ level during the first week of September in Baghdad,” Hoshyar Zibari told a news conference today in Baghdad.

It should be noted that the presence of permanent US basis in Iraq, essentially the middle of the troubled middle east, was a long-term goal of invading Iraq in the first place.  With permanent bases in place, as Iraqis take more and more responsibility for the security of their own nations, our troops can pull back into the bases (with a good majority of them coming home) for a mission that would likely boil down to simply backing up the Iraqi forces to ensure that the Iraqi government is not toppled by extremist forces.

We’d also have another nice strategic position to protect against future threats from, say, Iran.

What we’ve accomplished in Iraq is essentially the creation of an ally nation, as shaky as the new government in Iraq is.  President Bush should be commended for this, but he probably won’t be.  Instead this invitation from Iraqis to stay in their country will likely be ignored by the media, and twisted into something it’s not by the anti-war left.