sofa300.jpegA Thanksgiving present from Baghdad: the Iraqi parliament has passed the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) ending the war by 2011. Or, as AFP reports, possibly by May 2010.

According to AFP, the SOFA’s passage comes thanks to the Sunni-mollifying proposal to hold a popular referendum in 2009 that gives the Iraqi people a chance to essentially move up the SOFA’s deadline for a 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal. The final parliamentary maneuver was to move the schedule for that referendum up to May 30, 2009. What’s that mean?

Should the Iraqi government decide to cancel the pact after the referendum it would have to give Washington one year’s notice, meaning that troops would be allowed to remain in the country only until May 2010.

That would be… give or take a few days… why, sixteen months after Barack Obama takes office! Happy Thanksgiving from Baghdad, Barack! Iraq has come quite a long way since Thanksgiving 2003. Or, rather, the U.S. has, since all we’re doing is letting the Iraqis decide their own fate, as we always should have done. And I would guess that if the referendum question is something like "Do you want the U.S. to withdraw immediately, notwithstanding the SOFA’s 2011 schedule?" and there aren’t weird rules for negation — like, with the constitution, it would fail if two-thirds of the vote in any three provinces was a vote against — that referendum would pass overwhelmingly.

And, this being Thanksgiving, I can’t help but hold a Max Boot boot party. Boot observed the impending appointment of Gen. Jim Jones to Obama’s National Security Council and remarked:

This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq…

I guess the "all but" does a lot of work in that prediction.