Building permanent U.S. bases in Iraq sends wrong signal

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

That along with the base closures in the U.S.

By ERIK LEAVER
SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

A year ago, President Bush boldly said: "Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation and neither does America." Yet Congress is posed to finalize the president's $82 billion request for the Iraq war that includes a half-billion dollars for permanent military bases and another half-billion for building the world's largest embassy. Despite the president's assurances, the United States is preparing for a lengthy stay in Iraq.

Open-ended deployment in Iraq is bad news for the brave soldiers fighting the war and their families at home. And adding permanent facilities will actually decrease their security as they present a powerful recruiting tool for insurgent groups.

As the U.S. presence has escalated, so too has insurgent recruitment.

In November 2003, there were an estimated 5,000 insurgents. Today there are an estimated 18,000 insurgents and Iraqi officials estimate up to 200,000 additional supporters. The overwhelming common element between the 43 insurgent groups is resentment about the U.S. military presence.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/224055_iraqbases.html

[bennywhale]

1. It sends absolutely the right signals to me

EMPIRE

[sarcasmo]

4. EVIL EMPIRE

[BrklynLiberal]

2. One thing is for sure..all that money is not coming from any taxes being

paid by any millionaires....

The biggest embassy in the world??!!!!! Holy crap! Bush must have the tiniest little peepee in the world.

[reprehensor]

3. Mother Jones article, 'Digging In'

Digging In

If the U.S. government doesn't plan to occupy Iraq for any longer than necessary, why is it spending billions of dollars to build "enduring" bases?

By Joshua Hammer
Mother Jones
March/April 2005 Issue

When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters last December that he expected U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for another four years, he was merely confirming what any visitor to the country could have surmised. The omnipresence of the giant defense contractor KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root), the shipments of concrete and other construction materials, and the transformation of decrepit Iraqi military bases into fortified American enclaves—complete with Pizza Huts and DVD stores—are just the most obvious signs that the United States has been digging in for the long haul. It's a far cry from administration assurances after the invasion that the troops could start withdrawing from Iraq as early as the fall of 2003. And it is hardly consistent with a prediction by Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, that the troops would be out of Iraq within months, or with Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi's guess that the U.S. occupation would last two years. Take, for example, Camp Victory North, a sprawling base near Baghdad International Airport, which the U.S. military seized just before the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Over the past year, KBR contractors have built a small American city where about 14,000 troops are living, many hunkered down inside sturdy, wooden, air-conditioned bungalows called SEA (for Southeast Asia) huts, replicas of those used by troops in Vietnam. There's a Burger King, a gym, the country's biggest PX—and, of course, a separate compound for KBR workers, who handle both construction and logistical support. Although Camp Victory North remains a work in progress today, when complete, the complex will be twice the size of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo—currently one of the largest overseas posts built since the Vietnam War.

Such a heavy footprint seems counterproductive, given the growing antipathy felt by most Iraqis toward the U.S. military occupation. Yet Camp Victory North appears to be a harbinger of America's future in Iraq. Over the past year, the Pentagon has reportedly been building up to 14 "enduring" bases across the country—long-term encampments that could house as many as 100,000 troops indefinitely. John Pike, a military analyst who runs the research group GlobalSecurity.org, has identified a dozen of these bases, including three large facilities in and around Baghdad: the Green Zone, Camp Victory North, and Camp al-Rasheed, the site of Iraq’s former military airport. Also listed are Camp Cook, just north of Baghdad, a former Republican Guard "military city" that has been converted into a giant U.S. camp; Balad Airbase, north of Baghdad; Camp Anaconda, a 15-square-mile facility near Balad that housed 17,000 soldiers as of May 2004 and was being expanded for an additional 3,000; and Camp Marez, next to Mosul Airport, where, in December, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the base's dining tent, killing 13 U.S. troops and four KBR contractors eating lunch alongside the soldiers.

At these bases, KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that works in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers, has been extending runways, improving security perimeters, and installing a variety of structures ranging from rigid-wall huts to aircraft hangars. Although the Pentagon considers most of the construction to be "temporary"—designed to last up to three years—similar facilities have remained in place for much longer at other "enduring" American bases, including Kosovo's Camp Bondsteel, which opened in 1999, and Eagle Base in Tuzla, Bosnia, in place since the mid-1990s.

more@link

[Terran1212]

5. Actually the truest symbol

Of why the US entered Iraq...

[struggle4progress]

6. kick

[WI Independent]

7. The key is the word "occupy"...

We have tens of thousands of troops in Japan, Germany and South Korea yet we are not "occupying" those countries.

When Bush says we won't "occupy" Iraq indefinitely, he is NOT saying we won't have troops there indefinitely. He's not really even telling a lie on this one (although he's not telling the whole truth either). I believe the plan is to have troops there (with the blessing of the new government) as long as we are dependent on oil. I really have serious doubts that policy will change substantially when a Democrat becomes President (which will happen eventually).

[eridani]

8. My LTE to the P/I

Eric Leaver’s article about permanent military bases in Iraq is dead on. Reasonable people can disagree about how to leave Iraq while causing the least amount of further damage and how long that might take, but the bottom line must be no permanent bases, period. We need to be throwing all the resources we have into inventing the post-oil economy instead of trying to conquer and control a diminishing energy resource.

And instead of just naming the excuses for the invasion as lies, let us begin to tell the truth.

•Bush did not invade to get rid of WMD. There were none.

•Bush did not invade to fight Al Qaeda. Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and the invasion in fact took resources away from fighting it. And he still maintains close personal business relationships with Saudi Arabia, many of whose citizens funded and continue to fund Al Qaeda.

•Bush did not invade to get rid of Saddam the nasty dictator. He explicitly stated that the invasion was still on even if Iraq's neighbors had succeeded in their plan to convince Saddam and sons to go into exile. And he still maintains a very cozy relationship with Karimov of Uzbekistan, who is every bit as murderous as Saddam was.

•Bush did not invade to bring democracy. He fought having elections for as long as he could, and is now unwilling to abide by the platform of the party with the most votes, which calls for phased US withdrawal. A genuinely democratic Iraq will not agree to indefinite occupation or resource theft.

He invaded Iraq for one and only one reason, to plant a permanent military presence there against the wishes of its population, in order to control the entire region by force. Solving the problem of what to do next in Iraq requires that we first be honest enough to name the real goal and then to repudiate it.