"Since the invasion of Saddam's Iraq, those bases -- call them what you will -- have been at the heart of the Bush administration's "reconstruction" of the country. To this day, those Little Americas, with their KBR-lands, their Pizza Huts, their stop signs, and their miniature golf courses remain at the secret heart of Bush administration "reconstruction" policy. As long as KBR keeps building them, making their facilities ever more enduring (and ever more valuable), there can be no genuine "withdrawal" from Iraq, nor even an intention of doing so. Right now, despite the recent visits of a couple of reporters, those super-bases remain enswathed in a kind of policy silence. The Bush administration does not discuss them (other than to deny their permanency from time to time). No presidential speeches deal with them. No plans for them are debated in Congress. The opposition Democrats generally ignore them and the press -- with the exception of the odd columnist -- won't even put the words "base," "permanent," and "Iraq" in the same paragraph".
"It may be hard to do, given the skimpy coverage, but keep your eyes directed at our "super-bases." Until the administration blinks on them, there will be no withdrawal from Iraq." [
Can you Say "Permanent Bases"?, Tom Engelhardt,
Mother Jones, 2-14-06]
George W. Bush and his writers have been telling us what they want us to hear, but not what is really happening.
In order for the Bush regime to retain its stranglehold of power over Congress, the American people and the world, its propaganda apparatus must constantly remind us that the Long War will continue until it has been "won" (VICTORY!).
This is both delusion and deception.
It is a grand illusion and the big lie (which I know is offensive to
the liars).
The turf of Iraq must remain in the talons of the U.S. Eagle even while we tell the world that our high and mighty bird (of prey?) is just passing over and through until the Iraqis can stand on their own feet (if they don't get knocked over by the bombs of us or them).
This Long War has been sad and tragic; but lucrative.
The lucre has gone to the civilian and military contractors there and over here.
The American people, of course, have been (and will continue to be) the obedient and devoted financiers of the LONG WAR.
In the meantime (and it is a very mean time indeed), the money filling the treacherous trough (& black hole) of Bush's Long War has decreased funding for (among other things) the education of America’s children (
Bush’s No Child Left With A Behind ) and Health Care (Screw the old folks...they're going to die pretty soon anyway!).
But the U.S. embassy in Iraq will still get its funding:
"The Bush administration is sinking between $600 million and $1 billion in construction funds into a new U.S. embassy. It is to arise in Baghdad's Green Zone on a plot of land along the Tigris River that is reportedly two-thirds the area of the National Mall in Washington, DC. The plans for this "embassy" are almost mythic in nature. A high-tech complex, it is to have "15ft blast walls and ground-to-air missiles" for protection as well as bunkers to guard against air attacks. It will, according to Chris Hughes, security correspondent for the British Daily Mirror, include "as many as 300 houses for consular and military officials" and a "large-scale barracks" for Marines. The "compound" will be a cluster of at least 21 buildings, assumedly nearly self-sufficient, including "a gym, swimming pool, barber and beauty shops, a food court and a commissary. Water, electricity and sewage treatment plants will all be independent from Baghdad's city utilities." It is being billed as "more secure than the Pentagon" (not, perhaps, the most reassuring tagline in the post-9/11 world). If not quite a city-state, on completion it will resemble an embassy-state. In essence, inside Baghdad's Green Zone, we will be building another more heavily fortified little Green Zone. [
Can You Say "Permanent Bases"?, Tom Engelhardt,
Mother Jones, 2-14-06]
And those huge ("non-permanent") bases in Iraq will receive their funding:
"Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post paid a visit to Balad Air Base, the largest American base in the country, 68 kilometers north of Baghdad and "smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq." In a piece entitled Biggest Base in Iraq Has Small-Town Feel, Ricks paints a striking portrait:
"The base is sizeable enough to have its own "neighborhoods" including "KBR-land" (in honor of the Halliburton subsidiary that has done most of the base-construction work in Iraq); "CJSOTF" ("home to a special operations unit," the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, surrounded by "especially high walls," and so secretive that even the base Army public affairs chief has never been inside); and a junkyard for bombed out Army Humvees. There is as well a Subway, a Pizza Hut, a Popeye's, "an ersatz Starbucks," a 24-hour Burger King, two post exchanges where TVs, iPods, and the like can be purchased, four mess halls, a hospital, a strictly enforced on-base speed limit of 10 MPH, a huge airstrip, 250 aircraft (helicopters and predator drones included), air-traffic pile-ups of a sort you would see over Chicago's O'Hare airport, and "a miniature golf course, which mimics a battlefield with its baby sandbags, little Jersey barriers, strands of concertina wire and, down at the end of the course, what appears to be a tiny detainee cage." [
Can You Say "Permanent Bases"?,Tom Engelhardt,
Mother Jones, 2-14-06]
