Can someone explain the plan to remove US troops and mercenaries from Iraq?

[NNN0LHI]

I am really curious as to how all this will work. Won't the Iraqis be shooting at the transports as they are leaving? Think about that image being flashed all across the world on the news. Won't the puppet government Bush has holed up in the Green Zone have to leave when the US leaves? What about the Iraqis who collaborated with the US all these years? What do we do with them? Bring them back here to the US?

Anyone have answers to any of these questions? And be prepared, I have a lot more questions besides these.

And the thing is its no longer a question of IF we leave any more. We have to leave. The cost of an operation like this is destroying our economy. We are bankrupting ourselves.

Don

[babylonsister]

1. The Iraqis might just be dancing in the streets when we leave.

:shrug: Many of them want us gone.

[deaniac21]

2. Just don't look for it to happen anytime soon.

[Mari333]

3. yes, its the elephant in the living room

No one wants to bring up the cost of the illegal occupation. Why isnt that brought up on a daily basis as the factor the contributes to the bankruptcy of this country?

www.costofwar.com

[Nickster]

4. I think the most accurate template for prediction will be Saigon, April 1975.

[HereSince1628]

5. This is the basic problem with holding a tiger by the ears.

The obvious solution is to not let go until the tiger is asleep.

To me the emerging plan seems to be to move US forces out of the cities and onto bases in the countryside and wait until the Iraqi people get bored with the US force presence. That will take at least until late fall of 2011 or the early spring of 2012, until then the US with no fanfare will slowly reduce troop strength while being careful not to wake the tiger. I expect that midway through 2011, the Iraqis will be quietly presented with a new attempt to create permanent US bases and a force of about 50k. If that is successful, that is as far as the US withdrawl will go.

[NNN0LHI]

8. I don't believe the US can afford permanent US bases throughout the world any more

We had over 250,000 soldiers stationed throughout the world even before Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is truly breaking us.

My guess is the permanent US bases idea is going the way of high buckle shoes soon because we don't have a choice any more. The writing is on the wall.

Don

[HereSince1628]

11. We will see.

I personally don't see the US giving up its forward bases willingly. With India and China rising the control of the board will require bases in SW Asia and, if they can get them, E. Africa.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. Why?

Do THEY have foreign bases? If they can wield their influence without planting military installations across the world, why do WE have to? Are we that much less competent then they?

[NNN0LHI]

14. Why would India or China ever be a military threat to us?

I don't know what they would gain by invading and occupying America? Just a bunch of bad debt. What is the gain?

Don

[HereSince1628]

15. Their growing economic power (they are already military powers)

will make them ever more important competitors in the near future.

Conflict with serious economic rivals is a repeating pattern in human culture. If you haven't noticed the US is already fighting for access to SW Asian oil. This fight will very probably spread to rivals for those same resources.

The US, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian rivalries for energy resources are going to become deeper and deeper, and likely hotter and hotter, until they turn into opposition to each others' political positions. War is the resolution of economic and political disagreements between nations through the use of deadly force. That isn't about to change in any of our lifetimes.

Consequently US strategic planners will want to continue to be postioned to prosecute military objectives in nations circling the Indian Ocean.

[Dhalgren]

6. I think that President Obama will find a reason to stay.

Maybe not in the numbers that are there now, but enough for it to be hard to pretend that the US has actually withdrawn. I hope I am wrong, but I fear that the anti-war movement will become very active in the next couple of years. It will break some people's hearts, but it is coming...

[NNN0LHI]

10. Why do you think that? And I am not trying to be snarky

Is it because of the difficulty and bad press involved in getting us out? Does he think/know? the military industrial complex would kill him if he tried? I have considered they would try the latter myself.

Don

[Dhalgren]

13. Yeah. I think that Obama knows pretty well how the Empire works.

That is one of the reasons he has made it so clear that he is going to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Ramping up the slaughter along the Afghan/Pakistan border will put him in good with the MIC, but he will be pressured mightily to stay in Iraq. So if he can get the troop levels as low as 75 or 80 thousand, he'll call that a 'withdrawal of troops" and try to get the subject changed. Just my opinion. And it will be because the Empire must be maintained at all costs. Obama knows this, he would not have been elected President if he didn't. Every appointment, every statement, every move he has made, so far, demonstrates this fact...

[SIMPLYB1980]

7. How about we remove the mercenaries from our Country to.

I don't like the fact that Blackwater runs it's operations out of my State.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/27/9942

"Federal agents raided Blackwater Worldwide this week as part of an investigation into whether the private security company sidestepped federal laws prohibiting the private purchase of automatic assault rifles, the company said Thursday."

http://www.bytheriverblog.com/2007/10/time_to_shut_down_blackwater.html

"With every passing day, the private security firm known as Blackwater increasingly resembles an American version of the Nazi SS, namely a brutal, ideologically-driven private army outside the command and control structure of the regular U.S. Army. They are in Iraq at incredible expense to the U.S. taxpayer to provide security for U.S. State Department personnel. On Sept. 16, they killed 17 Iraqi civilians at an intersection in Baghdad, and the more journalists look into it, the worse it seems."

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=31259

"WASHINGTON — The State Department is preparing to slap a multi-million dollar fine on private military contractor Blackwater USA for shipping hundreds of automatic weapons to Iraq without the necessary permits. Some of the weapons are believed to have ended up on the country’s black market, department officials told McClatchy, but no criminal charges have been filed in the case. The expected fine is the result of a long-running federal investigation into whether employees of the firm shipped weapons hidden in shrink-wrapped pallets from its Moyock, N.C. headquarters to Iraq, where Blackwater is the State Department’s largest personal security contractor."

[Kashka-Kat]

9. AND WHAT ABOUT the 14 permanent military bases? Nobody talks about those - you know

they are staying no matter what. I suspect troops will simply "re-deploy" behind the secure walls of these bases.

That's what this so-called war has been about all along, is just getting the strategic foothold and regional control.