What George Bush Can't Say About Iraq >>>

In an effort to shift public perceptions, Mr Bush last week gave three speeches in as many days, vowing that America would not be pulling out of Iraq. "As long as I'm the President, we will stay, we will fight and we will win the war on terror," he said.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0828-01.htm

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/03/enduring_bases_iraq.html

Digging In

News: 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

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.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12319798

New U.S. Embassy in Iraq cloaked in mystery
Baghdad locale, slated to be completed in 2007, to be largest of its kind




Updated: 5:45 p.m. ET April 14, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future.

The new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome.

“We can’t talk about it. Security reasons,” Roberta Rossi, a spokeswoman at the current embassy, said when asked for information about the project.

A British tabloid even told readers the location was being kept secret — news that would surprise Baghdadis who for months have watched the forest of construction cranes at work across the winding Tigris, at the very center of their city and within easy mortar range of anti-U.S. forces in the capital, though fewer explode there these days.

The embassy complex — 21 buildings on 104 acres, according to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report — is taking shape on riverside parkland in the fortified “Green Zone,” just east of al-Samoud, a former palace of Saddam Hussein’s, and across the road from the building where the ex-dictator is now on trial.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb
Published: 07 January 2007


Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_iraqi-oil-maps.shtml

For Immediate Release
Mar 7, 2006 Contact: Press Office
202-646-5188

Maps and Charts of Iraqi Oil Fields

These are documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under a March 5, 2002 court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force. The documents contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents are dated March 2001. Click here to view the press release.

Iraq Oil Map
Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts - Part 1
Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts - Part 2
United Arab Emirates Oil Map
United Arab Emirates: Major Oil and Natural Gas Development Projects
Saudi Arabia Oil Map
Saudi Arabia: Major Oil and Natural Gas Development Projects

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Video_Recent_US_actions_could_signal_0112.html

Video: Recent US actions could signal Iran conflict, despite White House denials; GOPer's bill requires Congress OK on Iran

David Edwards and Mike Sheehan
Published: Friday January 12, 2007
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Despite its claims to the contrary, some see evidence that the White House is preparing for conflict with Iran.

US forces raided a facility that Iran claimed was being used for diplomatic purposes, alleging that Iranians were funneling weapons to the enemy. Six Iranians were captured in the raid at the consulate, with one being released earlier today.

Several analysts consider parts of President Bush's latest speech as an obvious threat to Iran. One, John Pike of GlobalSecurity, notes that U.S. actions could signal a conflict in the near future.

"It's really unclear what the President was saying," Pike said. "It's a little more clear what the United States is actually doing, was basically calling on Iran not to interfere with Iraq, not to further interfere with Iraq."

Pike added, "But, also, look at what he said the United States is going to do. As previously reported, several weeks ago, the aircraft carrier, John Stennis, is being dispatched to the Persian Gulf. That gives the United States two aircraft carriers in the Gulf. Round the clock operations. He also, surprisingly, announced that the United States was going to be deploying Patriot anti-missile interceptors to the region. It's difficult to imagine whose missiles those would be shooting down other than Iran. It's looks to me like the United States is, at least, raising its capabilities in preparation for possible military confrontation with Iran."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-jenkins/fukuyama_b_37908.html

Simon Jenkins

Bio

01.05.2007
Fukuyama (7 comments )
READ MORE: Iraq, Francis Fukuyama, Simon Jenkins, Dick Cheney, Israel, United States, Afghanistan, Iran, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair

A celebrated New Yorker cartoon of the 1950s showed a plane crashing on a runway. As everyone rushed to rescue the crew a solitary scientist walked in the opposite direction. He sighed, "Oh well, back to the drawing board."

As the George Bush's Iraq adventure smoulders on the tarmac, a small group of neo-cons are starting to escape the scene with varying degrees of dignity. Some such as Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Bremer have vanished. A handful, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair, remain in denial, parroting the Vietnam line that "we are winning, really". Others such as Francis Fukuyama have a more valid licence to recant, having doubted whether neo-conservatism was relevant to Iraq all along.

***
What is extraordinary, and what Fukuyama does not fully answer, is how so small a group of often crackpot intellectuals came to hijack a superpower. Under Bush men such as Wolfowitz, Cheney, Richard Perle, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer should have been locked away in some log cabinet. Kristol declared, "It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power." On what planet do these people live?

Such words would have been hubristic arrogance at the height of the British Empire. The neo-cons still cannot see what harm is done their cause by Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the 101st Airborne and extraordinary rendition. They cannot see that these methods of hegemony, minor in themselves, are 9/11 to the defenceless poor of Afghanistan, Iraq and the ghettoes of Palestine. American cried feel out pain after 9/11. They cry it now. Justified or not, this is a fact with which diplomacy (or war) must contend.

The good intentions of the neo-cons may seem axiomatic from within the beltway. America's friends abroad can only reply, and at the tops of their voices, that is now how it seems elsewhere in the world. When Cheney and company now threaten Iran, again with the best of intentions, those friends wonder respectfully if American has taken leave of its senses.