NYT: With Korea as Model, Bush Team Ponders Long Support Role in Iraq

[seafan]

With Korea as Model, Bush Team Ponders Long Support Role in Iraq

By DAVID E. SANGER
June 3, 2007

WASHINGTON, June 2 — For the first time, the Bush administration is beginning publicly to discuss basing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades to come, a subject so fraught with political landmines that officials are tiptoeing around the inevitable questions about what the United States’ long-term mission would be there.

President Bush has long talked about the need to maintain an American military presence in the region, without saying exactly where.

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But it was not until Wednesday that Mr. Bush’s spokesman, Tony Snow, publicly reached for the Korea example in talking about Iraq — setting off an analogy war between the White House and critics who charged that the administration was again disconnected from the realities of Iraq. He said Korea was one way to think about how America’s mission could evolve into an “over-the-horizon support role,” whenever American troops are no longer patrolling the streets of Baghdad. .....
But Korea is also the kind of analogy that stokes the fears of those who see Iraq leading to unending war. The model suggests a near-permanent presence in Iraq, though presumably with far fewer troops than the nearly 150,000 now in place.

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Critics on the left who have argued for years that the Iraq war was really about oil leap on such talk as evidence that the administration’s real agenda is to put its forces right on top of Iraq’s still-broken pipelines. Those who fear the next target is Iran — including the Iranians — will see the permanent bases as staging areas, in case the United States decides to take military action against Iran’s nuclear program and deal with the repercussions later.
And the analogy rankles analysts who believe the situation is far less similar to Korea than it is to Vietnam in the ’60s or Beirut in the ’80s, where American bases became the No. 1 targets, and a rallying call for extremists, in an endless guerrilla war.

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Some of Mr. Bush’s critics see an effort to reach for any comparison other than Vietnam. .....
Administration officials and top military leaders declined to talk on the record about their long-term plans in Iraq. But when speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, they describe a fairly detailed concept. It calls for maintaining three or four major bases in the country, all well outside of the crowded urban areas where casualties have soared. They would include the base at Al Asad in Anbar Province, Balad Air Base about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and Tallil Air Base in the south.

“They are all places we could fly in and out of without putting Americans on every street corner,” said one senior official deeply involved in the development of Iraq strategy.

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But the problem, as one senior administration official acknowledged last week, is that there is little reason to believe that American bases will stop Iraq from being “the great jihadist training camp it is today.” .....
The question is whether, in the firestorm of Iraq, their contribution to security would outweigh their roles as symbols of occupation or targets of terrorism.

[Avalux]

1. Korea as model? Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

These fucking idiots just don't get it do they?? x(

[muntrv]

2. Uh South Korea actually wanted us there. Iraq doesn't.