Today, the House held a hearing featuring two members of the Iraqi Parliament in order “to hear their assessment of the proposed U.S.-Iraq Security Agreement,” an agreement proposed by the Bush administration permitting combat forces in Iraq for an unspecified period of time. Iraq is currently seeing “growing and widespread protests…over the scope of the agreement.”

In the hearing, parliamentarians Nadeem Al-Jaberi and Khalaf Al-Ulayyan expressed their support for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. In an exchange with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Al-Jaberi said that U.S. presence in Iraq is highly unpopular with the public, as roughly 70 percent of Iraqis favor a withdrawal:

PAUL: What percent of the Iraqi people would agree with us leaving under those circumstances?

AL-JABERI: I ask you to perhaps have a referendum, and that will tell you the truth.

PAUL: So you have no idea. You have no idea. Maybe only 5 percent would support us leaving. You have to have an idea.

AL-JABERI: Of course not. The majority of the people of Iraq are with the withdrawal. … Perhaps even about 70 percent.

Watch it:

Given the Iraqis’ opposition to U.S. forces, Paul asked how the public perceives the 104-acre, $700 million U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which consists of 27 buildings and 3,000 employees. Jaberi ripped its massive scale:

AL-JABERI: It is certainly larger than the diplomatic mission for which it has arrived for. … I mean why do we need 3,000 employees in an embassy in Iraq if we consider it as a diplomatic mission like any other diplomatic mission? From the principle of reciprocity, would it be appropriate for Iraqis to establish a 3,000 employee embassy in Washington? … It [the embassy] certainly would not be a very positive signal to the Iraqi people.

Al-Jaberi also criticized the enclosed nature of embassy activities, which sits in the heavily-fortified Green Zone: “And yes, there is some procrastination in its relationship with the society, because its relations are limited to the Green Zone.”

The Israeli press is reporting today, during a White House meeting today, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will urge President Bush to prepare an attack on Iran:

Citing sources close to the Israeli prime minister, Yediot Achronot reported on its front page Wednesday that Olmert, who is due to hold closed-door talks with Bush in Washington, will say that “time is running out” on diplomatic efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin writes that “there are some signs that [Olmert will] have a receptive audience” in his White House meeting. Speaking at AIPAC yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered an “unusually sharp” verbal assault against Iran. Olmert himself told the audience, “We must stop the Iranian threat by all possible means.”

Despite Bush and Olmert’s mutual agreement on the possible need for force, Yediot Achronot reports that a variety of factors are weighing against such a course of action:

It is doubtful whether such decision, under such circumstances, has a precedent in American history. Almost everything is working against it: The Iranians are not threatening the United States. They are careful about not initiating an incident that would give the Americans a pretext to attack. Such operation has no international support, not openly at least, and most of all, following the entanglement in Iraq most Americans strongly object to opening yet another front in the Middle East and treat any military initiative by Bush with suspicion.

Nevertheless, as time ticks down on Bush’s presidency, the rumors of a possible last-minute military strike on Iran are increasing. The Jerusalem Post reported last month that a senior administration official told Israeli officials to anticipate such an attack.

While the White House has dismissed these reports by claiming they are “not worth the paper they’re printed on,” neoconservatives are getting a very different message. Asked recently whether he could imagine Bush attacking Iran before the end of his term,” John Bolton said, “I think so, definitely.” Norman Podhoretz has made a similar claim. Richard Perle has said he has “very little doubt” that Bush could order a strike before he leaves office.

In a conference call today, John McCain’s foreign policy spokesman Randy Scheunemann accused Barack Obama of “walking back” an earlier offer to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Stating that Obama now says ” he would only meet with appropriate [Iranian] leaders,” Scheunemann snickered that “Generally, the president is considered the head of a country.”

That may be generally true, but it is not true of Iran. In several previous posts, we noted that McCain seems confused about who is really in charge in Iran. As reporter Joe Klein tried to point out to McCain several weeks ago, it is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, not President Ahmadinejad, who is the head of the country. This seems like something Americans might want their president to have more than just “general” knowledge of.

Last month, the Senate passed Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) 21st Century GI Bill on a veto-proof 75-22 vote. Steve Robertson, the American Legion’s legislative affairs director, said Webb’s bill “was clearly a cooperative operation, bipartisan and with involvement with the veterans service organizations,” adding, “That’s why I think everyone’s pretty much in sync with it … it was a group effort.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) not only skipped the vote on Webb’s bill, but he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also failed to include veterans’ concerns while drafting their competing measure. Veterans groups said they were not consulted for the Graham-McCain version of the GI Bill, calling their measure “very partisan“:

“We didn’t have that much input into [the Republican version] – there was no dialogue to my knowledge other than ‘this is it,’” Mr. Robertson said. [...]

The Graham-Burr-McCain plan is “very partisan and is seen as a way to convolute the GI bill, or to slow the Webb-Hagel proposal down,” [VFW's deputy director for legislative affairs Eric] Hilleman said.

This isn’t the first time McCain has ignored veterans concerns. While he has claimed that he has “received the highest award from literally every veterans organization in America,” it seems he has some trouble with the literal meaning of “literally”:

– Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a grade of D for his record of voting against veterans. (By contrast, Obama got a B+.)

– Disabled Veterans of America noted McCain’s dismal 20 percent voting record on veterans’ issues. (Obama had an 80 percent.)

– In a list of “Key Votes,” Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) notes McCain “Voted Against Us” 15 times and “Voted For Us” only 8. (Obama voted for VVA 12 times, and against only once.)

Last month, McCain said, “I take a back seat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans,” except when in comes to rewarding them for their sacrifices.

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, the Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In the Wall Street Journal this morning, Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby, the former commander of the Joint Task Force overseeing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, claims the conditions at Guantanamo are far better than general impression of the prison camp. He’s right, even objective accounts from neutral observers about the physical conditions at Guantanamo describe an improved living environment.

Of course, it demonstrates how bad things were when you take to the pages of a major national newspaper to claim credit for doing what you are supposed to be doing—it is the responsibility of the detaining power to provide humane and secure conditions of confinement. But the problems at Guantanamo are much deeper than calories or comforts; all the air conditioning and movies will not change the fact that many of these detainees have been held for more than six years without any meaningful opportunity to contest the lawfulness of their detention in an impartial hearing.

All the good work to try and improve conditions at Guantanamo is undone when one of the judges in the military commissions who had started to show some independence is fired. Just last week, Col. Peter Brownback was removed from the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr after he resisted pressure from prosecutors to set an early trial date, insisting they provide the defense access to potential evidence.

The chief judge, Col. Ralph Kohlmann, claimed that Brownback’s dismissal had nothing to do with his rulings in the Khadr case, and that may be true. But here is where Kohlmann and Buzby and the Pentagon and the Bush administration fail to grasp the nature of the problem: the perception of Guantanamo is fixed with the constant stream of negative stories amplified drowning out the examples of positive change. There is no rehabilitation of Guantanamo; the only pathway back to respectability is to close Guantanamo and start over.