"End this evasion on permanent army bases in Iraq":By Gary Hart

End this evasion on permanent army bases in Iraq
By Gary Hart
Published: January 4 2006 02:00 | Last updated: January 4 2006 02:00

It has been the dream of Republican neoconservatives at least since 1998 - and probably years before - to overthrow Saddam Hussein and to use the new client state of Iraq as the US's military and political base from which to pacify the complex and troubled Middle East. Leaving aside the plausibility of this notion, it is not one with which the great American leaders of history would have identified and certainly not one they would have attempted to carry out in secret.


Having failed in this enterprise, as some of us predicted, the question is: what now? There is still the possibility that a central remnant of this secret scheme may yet be salvaged. Surprisingly, the trick has drawn little attention from the American audience. It is to help install at least the semblance of a "democratic" government in Baghdad, even one that in author Fareed Zakaria's perceptive term is an illiberal democracy; to construct permanent US military bases at strategic points throughout the country and then persuade the new "democratic" government to invite us to stay.

So, now that the debate has finally turned not on whether to stay or to go but on how soon and under what conditions we should leave, it would be a mistake of epic proportions to assume things are that simple. There is an old movie line my friend Frank Mankiewicz, the veteran political adviser, is fond of quoting: "These are desperate men and they will stop at nothing." This he said during the Watergate years and we all knew what he was talking about, but it also applies today. For those of us who warned against kicking a Middle East hornets' nest, to assume that now it is simply a question of timing would be to assume that the neo-con Houdinis who gave us Vietnam-in-the-desert are out of tricks.
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plan all along, but Hart does illuminate the fact that no one is calling on the Idiot-in-Chief to answer that question honestly. And now is the time to ping the little prick with these hard questions. We need to slow or stop the Dictator's agenda, including this camp construction, for the next year and two weeks until we take back the congressional seats where we can and have to stop his madness from wreaking more world-wide havoc. A so-called permanent base would be under attack, or threat of attack, at all times U.S. troops are in-country.

concerning a "timetable" for withdrawal, there's your answer. The reason the Administration is so ambiguous about plans for withdrawal is because they don't plan on withdrawing. That's something that more people should be aware of.

Tells it like it is!

That, to me, indicates that Bush and the neocons have absolutely NO intention of leaving Iraq. They intend on making it a COLONY.


:evilfrown:

A couple of weeks ago. He said that the way we build military bases now, we can put them up and take them down fairly quickly. Yeah, right.

With the bases chosen that long ago, direct questions ought to be asked now: "How many years do you plan to keep US troops in the Tallil base?" etc. There's also the matter of the world's largest, most secure embassy being built in Baghdad - ask why it needs to be so large, unless the USA plans on running the Iraqi government from it.