Huge U.S. camp arises in Afghan Desert of Death

[G_j]

in case you missed this,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/07/AR2009050702325.html

Huge U.S. camp arises in Afghan Desert of Death

By Andrew Gray
Reuters
Thursday, May 7, 2009; 1:02 PM

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A huge U.S. military camp is taking shape in the baking heat of southern Afghanistan for thousands of extra U.S. troops charged with defeating a resurgent Taliban.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Camp Leatherneck, with concrete blast walls and semi-cylinder sand-colored tents, on Thursday as he surveyed preparations for what will be the biggest wave yet in a year that is seeing U.S. troop numbers doubled.

The camp is being constructed in Helmand province next to a British base, Camp Bastion, as Marines and other forces dramatically expand their presence in the most violent area of Afghanistan and heartland of the Taliban movement.

Construction workers clambered on the wooden frame of a new headquarters building as Gates spoke at the camp, where the majority of more than 8,000 marines now flowing into southern Afghanistan are expected be based.


"This place was desert at the end of January. I mean: nothing, said Navy Captain Jeff Borowy," the top U.S. military engineer in southern Afghanistan.

"Now you've got a 443-acre secure facility," he told reporters traveling with Gates.

..more..


LBN thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3866289

[bananas]

1. I wonder if it's visible on Google Earth?

I wonder if someone made a kml file of the large bases?

edit to add: thanks, I did miss the other post.

[madfloridian]

2. We are taking over the middle east.

Iraq was the gateway, the excuse. It will become a corporate paradise, then we go back to Afghanistan and finish it there.

I agree with Robert Fisk. What in the world makes us think we can win there?

Robert Fisk's World: Why does the US think it can win in Afghanistan?

We, of course, have been peddling this crackpot nonsense for years in south-west Asia. First of all, back in 2001, we won the war in Afghanistan by overthrowing the Taliban. Then we marched off to win the war in Iraq. Now – with at least one suicide bombing a day and the nation carved up into mutually antagonistic sectarian enclaves – we have won the war in Iraq and are heading back to re-win the war in Afghanistan where the Taliban, so thoroughly trounced by our chaps seven years ago, have proved their moral and political bankruptcy by recapturing half the country.

It seems an age since Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld declared,"A government has been put in place (in Afghanistan), and the Islamists are no more the law in Kabul. Of course, from time to time a hand grenade, a mortar explodes – but in New York and in San Francisco, victims also fall. As for me, I'm full of hope." Oddly, back in the Eighties, I heard exactly the same from a Soviet general at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan – yes, the very same Bagram airbase where the CIA lads tortured to death a few of the Afghans who escaped the earlier Russian massacres. Only "terrorist remnants" remained in the Afghan mountains, the jolly Russian general assured us. Afghan troops, along with the limited Soviet "intervention" forces, were restoring peace to democratic Afghanistan.

I doubt we plan to win, we only plan to plant our US presence in yet another country.

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. Iraq is on the West side of Iran, Afghanistan is on the East side - flanking Iran

.
.
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That is the goal.

USA has nuclear armed subs in the Gulf, and can turn it's forces from Iraq and Afghanistan toward Iran on a dime.

It's been planned by the BFEE and PNAC thugs since the early '80's

Iran is surrounded by USA's War-Machine

No accident methinks . . .

Ponder that.

:freak:

[madfloridian]

4. Pondered it a lot the last few years.

Have decided that both parties are complicit in this middle east acquisition. We have people desperate for health care, yet we are building huge embassies and military bases.

[shadowknows69]

5. And it will all make for a nice convenient pipeline

Once we've exterminated the populace down to manageable levels.