Much has been made of trying to stop using the term war and define it as an Occupation. But an occupation is also something defined by international law, with specific requirements (providing security, basic infrastructure like electricity, etc.) which we are not fulfilling. When we occupied Japan and Germany, we put a military government in place - that is what the so-called Coalition provisional Authority CPA was supposed to be. That occupying force relied on the existing infrastructure for things like electricity, but was RESPONSIBLE to ensure it happened.
The Iraq misadventure ceased to be a war and became an Occupation when bush said so on the carrier, May 2, 2003.
The Occupation ended when "In order to defeat possible insurgent planning, the CPA transferred power to the newly appointed Iraqi Interim Government at 10:26 AM local time on June 28, 2004. The CPA thus disbanded, L. Paul Bremer left Iraq that same day."*
From that moment forward, for over three years, our troops in-country have not had a properly defined mission. They are being used in a variety of ways, some in cooperation with the host country, others not. But what they are doing is
police action. They are hunting down criminals and arresting them, finding bombs and defusing them, etc. Some of the criminals may be loosely affiliated with international "terrorist" groups; most are local gangs participating in gang warfare/civil war. They are also building blast walls to protect neighborhoods and other such activities. Aside from that, they spend a lot of time protecting each other. This is neither "war" nor "occupation." It is a violation of the purpose of our military, is
completely illegal. It is NOT what was authorized by congress, which was to "use necessary force to disarm Saddam Hussein." That ship sailed a long, long time ago**. Petraeus' tactic of embedding our troops in the neighborhoods in "Forward Operating Bases" in converted shopping malls, schools, and such is analogous to a city police force deciding to get cops on the street. It has had some affect on reducing violence in the neighborhoods where it is done, but it is NOT warfighting and it is NOT "occupation." It is an illegal use of our military.
The Commander-in-Chief started issuing illegal orders the minute the CPA was disbanded. He is now trying to retroactively cover his tracks, by trying to trump up some sort of "pact" between the US and the "sovereign nation" of Iraq. He likens it to South Korea, where we have stationed troops on invitation as a deterrent to invasion by the North. Our big bases in Germany are there because of the NATO pact.
Congress needs to get this through their heads and call him on it. They need not to revoke the authority they gave him, but simply to declare him out of bounds, insist that he comply with existing law, and institute impeachment procedures within 48 hours if he does not immediately issue orders to stop "police actions." That, of course, would be step one in putting an end to this thing.
They also need to quickly ensure he cannot enter into any "mutual defense pact" with any nation without ratification by the congress. If congress has a say-so in signing Kyoto they sure as hell should have a say-so in committing troops for decades.
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_Provisional_Authority**None of the people who voted for THAT meant to enable THIS. One can rant all day about how they "should have known this is what he'd do" but they did not knowingly vote FOR this.