A permanent basis for staying in Iraq

[slaveplanet]

By Tom Engelhardt
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB16Ak01.html

Sometimes, when trying to cut through a veritable fog of misinformation and disinformation, it helps to focus on something concrete. In the case of Iraq, nothing could be more concrete - though less generally discussed in our media - than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has long been building in that country.

Quite literally, multi-billions of dollars have gone into them. In a prestigious engineering magazine in late 2003, Lieutenant Colonel David Holt, the army engineer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, was already speaking proudly of several billion dollars being sunk into base construction ("the numbers are staggering"). Since then, the base-building has been massive and ongoing.

In a country in such startling disarray, these bases, with some of the most expensive and advanced communications systems on the planet, are like vast spaceships that have landed from another solar system. Representing a staggering investment of resources, effort and geostrategic dreaming, they are the unlikeliest places for the Bush administration to hand over willingly to even the friendliest of Iraqi governments.

If, as just about every expert agrees, Bush-style reconstruction has failed dismally in Iraq, thanks to thievery, knavery and sheer incompetence, and is now essentially ending, it has been a raging success in Iraq's "Little America". For the first time, we have actual descriptions of a couple of the "super-bases" built in Iraq in the past two-and-a-half years and, despite being written by reporters under Pentagon information restrictions, they are sobering.

[atommom]

1. Excellent article. Hope everyone reads this... it's important!

[slaveplanet]

2. I posted this in LBN, less than 20 min

after it was in Google late breaking, and the mods moved it over here immediately.

I guess it's opinion , but it's important and probably belongs in GD at least.

And as the article says , These are the FIRST reports of details of these massive secret bases.

here's more- 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 10mph , 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".

Ricks reports that the 20,000 troops stationed at Balad live in "air-conditioned containers" which will, in the future - and yes, for those building these bases, there still is a future - be wired "to bring the troops Internet, cable television and overseas telephone access". He points out as well that, of the troops at Balad, "only several hundred have jobs that take them off base. Most Americans posted here never interact with an Iraqi."

[atommom]

3. I came here right after reading this piece in Asia Times, intending to

post it. You beat me to it! :toast:

[bananas]

4. Here's a better link to the story - and the original

This one has embedded links to the articles he quotes.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=9728

(on edit)
This looks like the original - it's on the authors own website
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=59774

[slaveplanet]

5. Thanks , Hopefully this was LBN yesterday

There are so many Cheney shooting posts ..things tend to get overlooked

[bananas]

6. I found those googling for the quote from the washington post

it was news to me, thanks.