Plan Iraq - Permanent Occupation
..............Drawdowns, withdrawal, timelines, mission shifting, building democracy and all the other current and long-standing phony rhetoric aside, America is in Iraq to stay as a conqueror and occupier - that is, until Iraqis finally kick us out as they will in time in a part of the world long a graveyard for foreign invaders. But it won't happen quickly or before countless more thousands die, are injured, suffer immeasurably, are displaced, and lose everything. This is the ugly dark side of imperialism, nurtured on conquest, unchallengeable control, and keenly focused on destroying and permanently occupying the cradle of civilization now smashed and planned for dismemberment.
In the meantime, a new "peace candidate" will become president in January, 2009 on the strength of distant echos of Richard Nixon's "peace with honor" 1968 campaign and hopes history would call him a "peacemaker." Instead, there were five and one-half more years of intense war, thousands more American deaths, and one to two million more Southeast Asian victims in Vietnam and the secret wars in Cambodia and Laos.
Whatever little, if anything, a new president does at home, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan will remain with plans for Iraqi forces eventually to do most of our killing and dying for us. If or when they're up to it, the scheme involves US troops staying hunkered down inside their super-bases, used as needed outside them, with massive air power deployed freely to slaughter innocent victims on the ground whenever they resist what no one should ever have to endure. For now, Iraqis have no choice but to bear up and fight back because it's their misfortune to have an ocean of "our" oil beneath their sand we laid claim to.
Already discussed is Iraq's importance as the planet's last remaining "low-hanging fruit" bonanza of mostly untapped oil riches worth trillions of dollars as the key reason America came to stay. The US military arrived in March, 2003 and dug in for the long haul with fixed military installations around the country. Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, got most of the huge no-bid contracts, worth many billions, to war-profiteer and build them, irrespective of its outlandish record of waste, fraud and abuse.
As of May, 2005, US forces were operating out of 106 bases around the country from an original estimated 120 sites. They range in size from the huge Main Operating Base (MO
Camp Victory complex near Baghdad airport where thousands of American troops are stationed to smaller ones known as Forward Operation Sites (FOS) that are still major installations. In addition, there are many Cooperative Security Locations (CSL) that are small outposts for as few as 500 personnel, a number of prisons and detention facilities, and an original dozen sites given to Iraqi military or police units that now likely number many more.Reports vary, and much remains secret, about the administration and Pentagon's current and future construction plans for Iraq. What is known is $18 billion earlier was allocated for in-country work that includes base installations, the US Embassy and whatever other occupation facilities are intended. The current figure is likely much higher. It's also known US engineers are focusing on building 14 large "enduring bases" for extended encampments for the tens of thousands of US forces there now and future replacements.
Professor Emeritus Jules Dufour of the University of Quebec, Canada discussed "The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases" in his July 1, 2007 article posted on Global Research.ca. It included detailed information plus maps and much more on what he called "the Worldwide development of US military power (in place) to view the (entire) Earth surface as a vast territory to conquer, occupy and exploit (for giant US corporate behemoths it's in league with)." He characterizes the scheme as a process of "Humanity....being controlled and enslaved by this Network of US military bases." He and Chalmers Johnson believe they number 1000 or more that, according to Johnson, were in 153 countries as of September, 2001 and now likely in 160 or more. There are also many other secret, espionage, and other bases jointly used in many countries with their hosts.
Dufour says post-9/11, the US built 14 new bases in the Persian Gulf region. It's also involved "in construction and/or reinforcement of 20 bases (106 structured units as a whole) in Iraq" plus others in Afghanistan and other Central Asian former Soviet bloc countries and elsewhere to encircle and control both regions' strategic resources, mainly oil, and the pipeline routes needed to transport it.
Iraq bases are located or are being built around Baghdad, Mosul, Taji, Balad, Kirkuk, Nasiriyah, Tikrit, Fallujah and Irbil. There are also plans to rebuild and improve Baghdad, Mosul and other airfields as well as rebuild roads and other essential infrastructure strategically needed for occupation. There are no plans to help the Iraqi people left on their own. They have the barest of essential services, and infrastructure to provide them, like functioning hospitals, medications, electricity, clean water, safe food to eat, fuel, schools, and most everything else.
Most important for the planned long haul will be four to six or more super-sized bases on the order of small towns with their own neighborhoods and kinds of amenities found in typical US ones. Inside them, it's hard distinguishing between Iraq and America unless more sophisticated and better aimed rocket and mortar rounds strike nearby that's becoming more common.
The biggest of these bases so far is the huge Balad one. It houses the major Air Force operation in the country, including its new spacious, state of the art, "Kingpin" air traffic control center dividing the country's airspace into "kill boxes," called the Common Grid Reference System. The largest Army logistical support center is here as well, and it's also where thousands of civilian contractors, in neighborhoods known as "KBR-land," are based with all the comforts of home for them and military personnel when it's quiet inside. The so-called secret Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF) is also at Balad. It's kept behind "especially high walls" for privacy and seclusive separation from other operations based there.
The al-Asad airbase is the largest marine encampment in the country located in western Anbar province where resistance to US occupying forces has been stiffest. It, too, has a hometown feel with similar amenities to the country's other major bases intended to be permanent. While the Pentagon won't admit it, four super-bases were operating last year with plans likely for at least two more. In addition, it was planned, but now not certain, that British forces would maintain a permanent military presence in the south around Basra where it's now based. If Britain pulls out, as its public demands, the Pentagon will move in and likely expand the facilities with at least another super-sized one for that strategically oil-rich part of the country. They'll need it as the Brits are no more in control there than US forces anywhere else. Their 2006 Operation Sinbad flopped with militias on the ground in full control.
Nonetheless, America came to Iraq to stay as long as the Middle East is resource-rich and the greatest untapped portion by far is in Iraq. But history shows the best-laid plans don't always work out as intended. Occupiers aren't welcome anywhere with Iraq and Afghanistan particularly adept at expelling earlier ones that tried and failed, including the British from both countries who should know better. Journalist Felicity Arbuthnot notes on Global Research.ca July 14 that on this day in 1958, "the Iraqi army toppled the British (post WW I-imposed) royal regime, which had opened the door wide for Western monopolies to plunder the country's oil wealth under unjust concession." Her message to modern-day plunderers: "Listen to history."
Permanency may only be in the eyes of the beholder and may end much sooner than planned. Our super-bases, with all their size, security and comforts of home, may become no more permanent than their mega-predecessors in Danang, Cam Rahn Bay and the Saigon embassy (a miniature compared to the Vatican-sized behemoth in Baghdad's Green Zone) where the last remnants of US presence in Vietnam were helicoptered from its rooftop in defeat and humiliation. It forced us to give up what we intending keeping unchallenged with visions as conquerors no different than today.
In the end, we abandoned them because we were beaten and had no other choice. What a determined third-world Asian country did 30 years ago to the world's strongest superpower, Middle East and Central Asian ones are doing today to the only remaining one slipping fast and running out of excuses why.
It's just a matter of time before history repeats with the same result. Iraqis and Afghans believe it and intend to prove it again. Too bad Washington hard-liners know little history and haven't figured it out. One day they will. They're just slow to catch on. Ruling empires never see the tide turning and that they're swimming against it. George Bush's America is no different. It bit off more than it can swallow and will end the same as others wrecked on the shoals of their own hubris.
The scene is playing out in the graveyard of other imperial powers in the Middle East and Central Asia. It just remains for the final chapter to be written ending rest in peace unless Americans locate their cajones and write their own version first. It has to reject corrupted power politics; remove the criminal class; restore the rule of law; place the rights of humanity and democratic values above wealth and privilege; and end forever the hellish wars fought for them............
