Dr. iRack at Abu Muqawama on Bush wanting us to stay in Iraq until 2015, Maliki wanting us out in 2010, and the two settling on 2011:
The date is not finalized, and it is not clear what if any U.S. presence there might be after 2011 (since, even under Maliki’s recent formulation, the Iraqis could ask us to stay longer in a support role after that.) But if you want to know why our leverage has gone down, you now know. Because Bush was begging to let us stay longer than the Iraqis wanted, we had to give the Iraqis concessions instead of vice versa to let us do so. This whole thing should have been crafted to get the Iraqis to convince us we shouldn’t leave sooner and convince us we should provide them with residual support (counter-terrorism assistance, training and advising, deterrence against external foes, etc.)–but instead we begged to stay longer.
The Dish 