I do not question the legitimacy of that statement. I do question if any U.S. president would actually do that if he deemed it not to be in the national interests of the U.S.

The national interests of the U.S. could be defined as insuring the "oil contracts" remain  in the hands of U.S. companies or to prevent Iraq from becoming the puppet of Iran rather than the U.S.

It really chafes me, by the way, that the UN mandate is scheduled to expire in an election year.  I'd be very interested to know the process by which the Security Council decided on that particular timing.

It's not that we are incapable of swearing like the proverbial sailor or cussing like a mule-skinner, but rather that there are filters in the software that many law firms and companies use, where a lot of professionals who read this site work.  When one of those coarse words goes through the filter, it doesn't - it gets caught and then the site gets blocked because the stupid filters think the coarse word means the site is pron, and pron is bad to have in the workplace (thus, the acronym NSFW).  And when the site gets blocked, Jeralyn has to spend entirely too much time pleading on the telephone with some sysop to get the ban lifted.

Try using the asterisk, as in "Republicans have totally, and quite deliberately, f*cked up [insert name of anything they touched] and, as a result, we'll have to be cleaning up their sh*t for decades to come."

Iraq's phony sovereignty was one of those Clap-Louder If You Believe, self-attributed, fake milestones of Bush's War on Whatever.

The media preferred the happier, feelgood exercise of covering the Bushian Happy Happy War War Man-Dance; better ratings, I suppose.

And BTW, BTD, don't forget Obama's huge back exit to his 16-mo timeline of leaving troops there to vanquish "al Qaeda in Mesopotamia".

This sets up a near impossibie to achieve metric of regional stability, rather than Iraq-specific stability, and is no briefer than McCain's likelihood to keep'em there in perpetuity.

However, I had always said that you cannot get a more perfect excuse to get out of something you should never gotten into, like having that government tell you its time to go.  The Bush administration could make great political hay  by taking advantage of this excellent opportunity and tell the American people the following:

Well we did our best, we made history and created a democracy here and wish we could stay and do more but I will abide by the wishes of the Iraq government and its leaders, therefore I will begin a timely and careful  withdrawal of our troops.

The republicans would look great, not to mention that our troops would be coming home, in November since Iraq would no longer be a major issue and it would take away Obama's thunder on this issue.

Who or what entity in this Galaxy would have ever thought that Bu$hInc was "negotiating" with Iraq?

Just what is it that the neokonz think they are haggling over?  Status of forces?  The short-term, 1-year oil contracts have been let, so are they squabbling about the long-term leases?

As Big Tent makes clear--the presence or withdrawal of troops is not something to argue about, or is it?  Is there a screw-up over location, numbers, & armaments for the troops to protect the USA embassy?

Who are the negotiators?  Who's face-to-face?

And is Paul Lukasiak correct that al Maliki wants to "negotiate" his own propped-up status into perpetuity--or at least his own lifetime?

Finally, does the world perhaps have a "Kurdish Autonomous Zone" developing--or some other form of "Berlin Wall / 38th Parallel / Vietnam DMZ 17th Parallel" asinine non-solution to divide the Sunni-Shia-Kurd problem?

Really completes the picture of America-as-Bully.

To answer the question posed by your title: because we're more powerful, more ruthless than they are.  

The money from the oil is going into a fund.

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.

[snip]

The fact that Iraq's financial reserves, increasing rapidly because of the high price of oil, continue to be held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is another legacy of international sanctions against Saddam Hussein. Under the UN mandate, oil revenues must be placed in the Development Fund for Iraq which is in the bank.

The funds are under the control of the Iraqi government, though the US Treasury has strong influence on the form in which the reserves are held.

Iraqi officials say that, last year, they wanted to diversify their holdings out of the dollar, as it depreciated, into other assets, such as the euro, more likely to hold their value. This was vetoed by the US Treasury because American officials feared it would show lack of confidence in the dollar.