Negotiating With Terrorists (Sorry, Insurgents)

Billmon notes that after President Bush's recent address, we are now, very publicly but very clearly negotiating with our enemies in Iraq, with our recently-leaked plan to draw down troops in Iraq:

Now there are a couple of interesting things about this leak. One is its specificity. It is, essentially, a timetable for a major drawdown of coalition forces -- the very same timetable that President Clueless has said we must not talk about where the children can hear, lest it encourage the terrorists.

Secondly, the plan was leaked to the Daily Mail, a staunchly anti-Blair, anti-war and pro-conservative paper, which seems like an odd place for the Blairites to place a deliberate leak, unless they didn't want it to look too much like a deliberate leak.

Thirdly, the leaked plan was quickly acknowledged as genuine by the British government. U.S. officials also confirmed its authenticity, at least on background, although they also made the politically correct noises about contingency planning, making sure the Iraqis have the tools to defend their own country, blah blah blah.

...We know the Cheneyites are desperate to get at least one leg out of the Iraq bear trap, for both military as well as political reasons. (Whether they want to get out entirely is not clear, but it seems safe to say that even if they do still want to hold Ft. Iraq, they need to do it with a much smaller force. They don't really have much choice.)

Finally, we know -- or at least have detailed reports -- that the insurgents are insisting on a timetable for withdrawal as a condition for doing some serious negotiating:

The Iraqis had agreed beforehand to focus on their main demand, “a guaranteed timetable of American withdrawal from Iraq”, the source said. “We told them it did not matter whether we are talking about one year or a five-year plan but that we insisted on having a timetable nonetheless.”

And now, suddenly, we have a leaked timetable popping up in the press -- plausibly deniable, but not denied, with a specific target and specific dates, and one step removed from the U.S. media market, where it could have gotten a lot more domestic attention if such attention was desired by the Cheneyites.