By Steve Hynd
Despite a noisy campaign from the Obama administration to get the Iraqi government to ask the US to keep a troop contingent in-country after the end of this year, the begged-for request hasn't materialized. Nor is it going to. Prime Minister Maliki has been forthright in saying no such request will happen, only to be roundly ignored by U.S. generals and officials. And President Talibani�s chief of staff said the issue "will be delayed until all political parties agree on who will fill the vacant interior and defense minister posts" - which is code for "never", as Eric Martin pointed out, because the parties have been arguing about those posts without result since the last general election.
Now, Reuters' Baghdad bureau has the scoop on Maliki's preferred option: private contractors.
To avoid angering allies and fuelling sectarian tension, Maliki, who is also acting defense and interior minister, may opt to bypass parliament and have his ministries sign agreements with Washington for 2,000-3,000 U.S. trainers, sources said.
"If the political blocs refused to announce their final decision on the U.S. withdrawal ... Maliki would go it alone and sign memorandums of understanding with the American side," said a senior lawmaker in Maliki's State of Law party.
"In that case, he would not need to get the political blocs or the parliament to approve," the lawmaker said.
The lawmaker, who is close to Maliki, said the 3,000 U.S. trainers would need security, technical and logistic support which could raise the contractors' total to around 5,000.
...The trainers would not be active-duty military personnel but rather contractors with military or security backgrounds. They would not conduct combat operations, political sources said.
The mercenaries would be split over seven "training bases" dotted across the country. So it looks like Obama will have to keep his promise to get the US military out of Iraq by the end of the year after all. Look for this to feature in his campaign speeches, utterly ignoring the efforts he and his people made to break his promise.
Oh, and one last thing - the Iraqis weren't fooled by Obama's rebranding of combat units as "non-combat troops".
"We do not need to keep any combat troops ... We have intelligence cooperation with the U.S. and this will continue."
As, no doubt, will intelligence co-operation with Iran. At least this private security fix will halt attacks on US soldiers by iran-backed militias, something the Pentagon's been talking up again recently as if it gave a reason to stay. The easiest way to stop such attacks was always to just leave.
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