Playing Chicken With Iraq

Marc Lynch on Maliki making himself clear about troops pulling out:

...here's why I'm less excited by this than some of my colleagues.  As with everything in Iraqi politics, there's likely to be a substantial gap between a political agreement and its implementation.  I assume that even if an agreement actually passes the Iraqi Parliament (which the speaker just said was unlikely), it will contain plenty of 'conditions-based' loopholes.  And I assume that both a Maliki government (and any likely successor) and a McCain administration would have every intention of exploiting those loopholes.   In other words, the upshot could well be to take McCain's 100 years off the table in American politics and enhance Maliki's still-shaky political position while legalizing precisely the long-term U.S. military presence it supposedly rules out.  That's why it's important to scrutinize the details of the agreement, and to get the right leadership in place to get the implementation right.