[Alberta's Child]

Except that it was stable when Bush left office, as Peters points out. It wasn’t Bush’s fault that Obama didn’t negotiate a SOFA. If Bush had had a responsible successor, things could have turned out very differently.

Why would Obama negotiate a SOFA if Bush had already negotiated one that laid out explicit terms for the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from Iraq after Bush left office?

[Yardstick]

That was a political expedient at the time and was expected to be renegotiared when it expired. Obama could have kept the troops there with an updated SOFA but he didn’t.