How long did you say we were going to be in Iraq?

A freind of mine who was recently in country told me about a military base near the Baghdad Airport. The high walls and controlled entry points were ominous and he said noone knew too much about what went on behind the walls of this huge sprawling base. Seems, he only needed to go to the internet to find out.

By his report, the base is known as Camp Liberty, a small American city in the heart of Baghdad. He had mentioned earlier that our troops could start pulling out by the end of the year but when we started discussing this camp, he said it seemed highly unlikely that we'd pull out anytime soon, meaning years.

I decided to find out a little about the camps. Seems, he was right. There are camps there. Actually, the desciption is more like a mini-city complete with a giant PX, Pizza Hut and a Burger King. If we are building these massive construction projects, how can they say we are going to pull out anytime soon?

Here' an article about the camps.
http://www.libertyforum.org/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=iraq_war&Number=293415423&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1&t=0

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.

I guess this means we're not going anywhere anytime soon.

awhile back said Sen John McCain thinks we'll be there 'ten or twenty years'.

The International Herald Tribune, 04 September 04, by Bob Herbert
The Republicans' bizarre parallel universe
'When asked this week on CNN how long the U.S. military is likely to remain in Iraq, Senator John McCain replied "probably" 10 or 20 years. "That's not so bad," he said, adding, "We've been in Korea for 50 years. We've been in West Germany for 50 years."'

www.militaryweek.com/mustreads090704.shtml

Don't expect to see this article accessable on the web for long, McCain will end up unable to run for dog-catcher if word gets out !

Why would anyone believe ANYTHING the assholes have to say!

Obviously, this is not the case.

I only wish the PNAC utopians heeded this simple criterion. But they're out to remold the world in their own psychotic image, whether it's welcomed or not.

:grr:

PS--Didn't mean anything personal by my original post--that was a slight variant on a New Yorker cartoon: "No, Thursday's no good. How about never? Does never work for you?"
:hi:

just to the 12th of never.

THAT is one of the reasons that we invaded Iraq.

Rumsfeld has consistently said the U.S. will stay in Iraq "as long as necessary to successfully complete the mission." This just means they will have to keep changing the mission. How many times has it changed already? I've lost track.

I'm not suggesting the insurgents or any other military force will forcibly eject our military from Iraqi territory. I'm saying the "powers that be" -- the military/industrial/corporate/political complex -- will never voluntarily leave.

We'll be forced to leave because of an economic tailspin that renders it all but impossible to sustain the expense, or the political climate in this country will change sufficiently to compel the withdrawal of our military.

But currently, there is no intention whatsoever of abandoning those military bases.