General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Greenwald: Vote Obama – If You Want a Centrist Republican for US President [View all]joshcryer
(62,270 posts)...and it simply was decided that if Iraq wanted future training forces they could negotiate those separately (and immunity clauses would be present) rather than renegotiate SOFA, since Iraqi's were against SOFA, and it would show a big sign of weakness for the Iraqi government to renegotiate SOFA.
This is in stark contrast to Bush who completely abandoned the military forces in the beginning, which was arguably the largest contributor to the protracted length of the war.
See: Libya, where said military forces and police were maintained and not absolved unilaterally.
I'm glad that Obama didn't press the training forces issue, as I'm sure if he was like Bush he would've done it. Certainly McCain wanted them to stay regardless. And I don't fault him for allowing the discussions to be made before the determination was made, as it would be irresponsible to not consider it at all, like Bush would've done.