The US-Iraq Security deal (SoFA) is dead until the next administration

The sticking point appears to be a timeline for withdrawal. The Bush administration just won't sign onto that, and, politically, Maliki can't agree to anything that doesn't explicitly bar a permanent presence, so now everybody's kicking it down the road.

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

Although President Bush has repeatedly rejected calls for a troop withdrawal timeline, "we are talking about dates," acknowledged one U.S. official close to the negotiations. Iraqi political leaders "are all telling us the same thing. They need something like this in there. . . . Iraqis want to know that foreign troops are not going to be here forever."

Imagine that. Iraqis don't want a permanent presence.....

And don't miss this little paragraph at he end, a "US official" bragging that they have gotten around balance of powers.

According to U.S. officials, Maliki also hopes that a temporary protocol would circumvent the full parliamentary review and two-thirds vote he has promised for a status-of-forces agreement. "He is trying to figure out, just as we did, how you can set up an agreement between the two and have it be legally binding," one official said, "but not go through the legislative body."

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