so much for that "bad arabic translation" story the bush administration was pushing last week.
to summarize: bush entered into an agreement with the iraqi government to keep forces in iraq indefinitely. however, agreement committing u.s. forces to provide security guarantees are "treaties" and must be ratified to be constitutional. bush refused to submit the agreement to congress claiming that the agreement reached was merely a "status of forces" agreement that does not require congressional approval. the further claimed that the apparent security guarantees that appear in the english version of the agreement were not in the original and instead were a translation error.
which, of course, only prompted people to ask to see the arabic version of the document. the white house initially refused to respond to the requests, but now the arabic version appears on the state department web site. and the arabic version seems to have all of the same security guarantees as he english version, the very language that made the agreement a "treaty" requiring ratification.
which means, once again, that the bush administration has lied to cover its ass about iraq. it also means that the "agreement" bush entered into with prime minister maliki is not binding. which makes me wonder what was the point of all of this? why does the administration lie like that when it is all-but inevitable that they will be caught? and why take all this effort to legally bind the u.s. to stay in iraq beyond the president's current term when the "agreement" isn't even worth the paper it is written on? are they really that stupid and incompetent? at this point, i simply don't have any other explanation.
