"So, if you measure the surge from a military point of view, it has succeeded," Allawi said. "But I don't think this was the [prime] objective, because soon you will have reversals. Security has not prevailed, and the key element in security is reconciliation, and building national institutions for the country. If this does not happen, then the surge will go in vain."

Despite his role as arch-rival to current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (whose party defeated Allawi's in Iraq's 2005 elections), Allawi seems to concur with Maliki's call for a plan for withdrawal of U.S. troops. In his opening statement, Allawi told the subcommittee, "As we think about moving to the next stage of our relationship, it is appropriate to discuss a time frame for reduction of U.S. forces."

He cautioned, however, against any withdrawal that would take place before non-sectarian institutions and defense forces take shape, or before a reconciliation process, which he noted as being high on Congress's list of benchmarks, is under way in earnest.

Nonetheless, leaders of Allawi's political party, the Iraqi National List, were among the 31 leaders in the Iraq parliament who signed a letter (PDF) presented to Congress on May 29 requesting that a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq to be part of any future agreement between the two countries. The 31 signatories signed as representatives of their political parties, collectively speaking for a majority of Iraq's 275 members of parliament.

The Bush administration has been negotiating with the Maliki government an agreement based on a "declaration of principles", which the two leaders signed November without the approval of their respective legislatures. This coming December, the U.N. mandate that protects U.S. forces in Iraq will expire, and the administration apparently seeks to replace it with a bilateral agreement that takes the U.N. out of the equation.

Subcommittee Chairman Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) yesterday conducted the seventh in his series of hearings on the declaration of principles. Allawi did not appear as part of that hearing, but rather in a briefing held afterwards. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Delahunt's co-sponsor on legislation that would extend the U.N. mandate for another six months, sat in for the "conversation", as it was called, with Allawi, commiserating over the lack of transparency by their respective executives about agreements under discussion via the declaration of principles. (DeLauro is not a member of the foreign affairs commitee.)

"When you said you don't know what the substance of that agreement is—that's the same for us," DeLauro said.

Once seen as a tool of the Bush administration (especially during the 2004 campaign against John Kerry), Allawi today is singing a different tune from the cheerful notes he once struck in favor of Bush's Iraq policy. His eyes are clearly trained on the 2008 U.S. presidential election—and Iraq's 2009 national elections.

—Adele M. Stan
The Media Consortium