Plan Iraq - Permanent Occupation

by Stephen Lendman

Congress is back from its July 4 break and with it
more bluster and political posturing on changing
course to keep things the same, including everything
not working in place.  It’s the same old scheme, back
again, to fool enough of the people all the time and
most all of them long enough to move on to the next
change of course mission shift starting the whole
cycle over again.  Even the blind can see the
hopelessness of staying the course in Iraq.  Aside
from its lawlessness and immorality, pushing on with a
failed effort qualifies as a classic definition of
insanity - continuing the same failed policies,
expecting different results.

The only sensible, honorable option is a full, speedy
withdrawal along with providing multi-billions for
Iraqis to rebuild what we destroyed and have no
intention restoring now or ever beyond what’s needed
for permanent occupation.  The only other honorable
option is owning up to what no one in Washington or
the major media will do - that the Iraq and Afghan
conflicts are illegal wars of aggression making those
responsible for them in the administration and
Congress war criminals warranting prosecution for
their crimes. 

That won’t happen nor will the administration and
Congress do anything more substantive than say one
thing and do another.  It’s been an unbroken pattern
since 9/11, and especially on Afghanistan and
throughout the run-up to the Iraq invasion.  Both wars
were sold through lies and deceit. They’re based on a
fictitious “outside enemy” threat without which no
“war on terrorism” could exist, and no imperial
foreign wars could be waged. 

They’re possible only by scaring the public enough to
believe the threat is still real, and “Enemy Number
One” Osama bin Laden (recruited through Pakistan’s ISI
as a CIA asset in the 1980s) and Al-Queda represent
it.  So with Saddam gone and no WMDs found, staying
the course is vital to the nation’s security even
when, in fact, the truth is the opposite, crying
wolf’s wearing thin, and selling snake oil solutions
get harder to do.  But schemers keep trying with
complicit Democrats as much part of the scam as
Republicans and Bush loyalists, dwindling down to a
precious hard line few but still around in key
positions making noise.

With “the walls of Jericho” crumbling around him as
the world’s most hated man and the ship of state
listing badly, a pathetic caricature of a president
keeps pleading for more time.  He claims it’s needed
to head off the threat of “mass killing on a horrific
scale” in Iraq and plenty at home as well.  He then
continues using the same timeworn line that the war
can be won, the “surge” is working, give it a chance,
and withdrawing will be disastrous.  Be more patient,
and we’ll know more in September we’re told. 

The Iraqi puppet government gets blamed for what’s
gone wrong with no one in Washington pointing the
finger where it belongs.  George Bush can do no better
than keep asking Congress and the public “to give
(generalissimo) David Petraeus a chance to come back
(September 15) and tell us whether his (unworkable)
strategy is working, and then we can work together on
a way forward (further over the cliff).” 

At his July 12 news conference, he never mentioned and
attending shameless journalists never pressed him on
CIA Director Michael Hayden’s earlier bleak assessment
of things on the ground.  He called the Iraqi puppet
government “unable to govern” and its inability to do
it “irreversible.”  Also not discussed was the July UN
refugee agency’s plea for doubling its Iraq funding to
$123 million for the growing humanitarian needs of an
estimated 2000 people fleeing uncontrollable violence
in the country daily (60,000 a month) and an estimated
four million or more displaced refugees within and
outside the country.

No comment or questions were raised either on what
journalists Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian (daughter
of US political prisoner Sami Al-Arian) reported in
the July 30 issue of The Nation.  Based on interviews
with 50 returning Iraq combat veterans (ranking from
privates to captains), they wrote about “disturbing
patterns of behavior by American troops” and an
indiscriminate use of force (with pictures to prove
it) amounting to a “depraved enterprise.” Mentioned
were accounts of American troops gratuitously killing
Iraqi civilians, including children, that these
actions are common, go unreported, are rarely
investigated, and almost always go unpunished.

George Bush’s comments (and most others) ignore as
well that over 7 in 10 Americans favor a force
withdrawal, over 60% say the war was a mistake, only
one in five believe the “surge” improved things, and
new polls keep showing the numbers getting worse the
longer the conflict continues.  It’s got the
president’s approval rating barely above the lowest
ever registered since polling began with Richard
Nixon, Harry Truman, during the unpopular Korean war,
Jimmy Carter, briefly in 1980, and his own father
sharing bottom honors. 

Maybe George Bush is kept above rock bottom through
some creative manipulation of the data or the result
of what questions were asked, to whom, the phrasing
used, and the order in which they were presented.  It
seems likely for the most despised, distrusted and
disgraced US president ever.  Even clever pollsters,
however, can’t salvage Dick Cheney’s rating.  At a
bottom-scraping 12% reported, it’s the lowest number
scored for a president or vice-president ever, by far
and then some.

The reason is simple.  A decisive majority in the
country think the war’s unwinnable, was a mistake,
want it ended, and know it was based on lies.  People
resent being had. Even through heavily filtered
mainstream news reports, they know the situation on
the ground is out of control and an appalling
US-inflicted crime against humanity atrocity of
enormous proportions. 

No one in Iraq is safe anywhere, even in the heavily
secured, fortress-like Green Zone becoming more like a
embattled one daily with regular attacks on it causing
damage, injuries and deaths.  Few are reported, but
one on July 10 was with two to three dozen katyusha
rockets and mortar rounds striking inside the world’s
“ultimate gated community” killing at least three
persons and wounding 25 or more.  Throughout the
country, violence long ago spiraled out of control,
and since the “surge” began in February, even the
Pentagon admits things are worse, not better, in its
quarterly April - June report to Congress. 

It contradicts generalissimo Petraeus’ claim of
“astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad overall and
“breathtaking” progress even though he (and others
high up) earlier said repeatedly there’s no military
solution to the conflict.  The only thing
“breathtaking” about Petraeus is his inconsistency and
that he’s either more incompetent than Custer at the
“Little Bighorn” or a man who’ll say anything to
please George Bush.  On the ground, in fact, civilian
deaths are higher than ever. They number well over
5000 a month known about and countless others never
reported, the claimed June numbers notwithstanding
that are too low to be believed and should be
discounted and ignored as meaningless.  In addition,
US forces are sustaining more attacks and suffered the
highest level of listed fatalities and injuries in the
latest three month April - June period since the war
began. 

Nearly everyone outside the administration and
Congress knows the war is lost, but no one’s brave
enough to admit it or do anything about it.  So
shifting mission means “damn the torpedoes, full speed
ahead” with the dominant media always in tow to shape
the facts on the ground to fit the policy.  Admiral
Farragut would be proud.

Now it’s back to the political drawing board with a
repackaged new scheme certain to end up little
different from the last one.  Ideas floating promise a
substantial drawdown of troops leaving behind what’s
claimed is needed to maintain security for the Iraqi
people that’s killing thousands of them every month.
All NATO combined can’t contain the hate and growing
opposition in both war zones matched against any size
occupying force put in place to contain them.  Iraq
and Afghanistan have a long history of resisting
occupiers and a successful record of ousting them in
the end.  It will be the same this time as earlier
after many more lives are lost in a futile effort to
prove otherwise. 

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the struggle for liberation
is on the ground.  At home, shifting mission is being
concocted by scared politicians up for reelection in
2008. They’ll face millions of angry voters fed up
with wars they want ended and ready to throw out the
bums who won’t do it.  So it’s back to political
posturing (again) with Democrats and Republicans
trying to convince voters this time they mean it, and
what they say is what they’ll follow through on.  It’s
the same old repackaged scam in the nation’s capitol
where nothing can be taken on its face.  It’s high
time the public realized the criminal class there is
bipartisan, and nothing short of a new breed of
uncorrupted officials will change things.  And that
won’t happen until enough fed up voters elect them.

For now it’s business as usual, and summer battle
lines have the “intrepid” Democrat-led Congress and a
few nervous Republican defectors facing off with the
Bush administration on the FY 2008 DOD budget.  It
calls for an astonishing $648.8 billion plus an
additional $142 billion war supplemental likely to end
up topping $800 billion when the dust settles and
usual pork is added in.  Debate will play out the same
as last year with Democrats in the end failing to use
the one constitutional power Congress alone has - the
appropriation authority to cut off funding and end the
Bush administration’s imperial adventurism once and
for all.  No money, no wars, that simple.

It’s apparently too simple, and all that’s likely
ahead is more disingenuous posturing over restricting
troop deployments and setting an open-ended timetable
for an unspecified partial withdrawal at the
discretion of the administration taking full advantage
to do as it pleases.  And if that doesn’t work, George
Bush promises to veto any legislation setting
timelines for withdrawal he’ll ignore even if
overridden.  On July 10, he repeated his earlier
statements that Iraq troop levels “will be decided by
our commanders on the ground (obeying White House
orders), not by political figures in Washington, DC”
(except him, Dick Cheney and their hard line cronies.

The president has no more to fear from “opposition”
Democrats and “defecting” Republicans than he had
before, but he’s quivering anyway.  Their posturing
(and his) is as phony now as immediately post-9/11 in
selling the Afghan war and enacting police state laws.
It’s as bad as in pre-March, 2003, last year’s budget
debate, and this spring’s agreement to continue
funding through September with George Bush certifying
(on his word alone) progress is being made and Iraqis
are carrying their share of the burden that’s
impossible because the world’s only superpower can’t
handle its own.

But note Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s
compromising language with a September 15
administration/Pentagon accountability report
upcoming: “The war is headed in a dangerous direction,
and Americans are united in the belief that we cannot
wait until the administration’s September report
before we change course in Iraq.”  His next statement
shows he’s not preaching pullout but only says “We
cannot ask our military to continue to fight without a
strategy for success (never mind there is none short
of full, unconditional withdrawal), and we certainly
cannot ask them to fight before they are ready to do
so.”

He’s referring to deployment lengths (unchanged after
July 11 Senate amendments were blocked) and concern
for a broken military the Pentagon already admits to.
The likely outcome of current debate will be the same
quick fix as before, save for a few dubious amendments
achieving nothing.  In the end, the compromise
solution will be to kick the can down the road and
throw lots more money at the problem hoping it will go
away.  It’ll only get worse.  No amount can salvage a
lost war, lawmakers and the Pentagon know it, but
solutions like last year and this spring are coming
with bloated budgets getting more bloated. 

Ignore meaningless party line votes like the one the
House passed July 12 for withdrawing most combat
troops by April 1, 2008.  Not while this
administration’s in power, and so far, the Senate’s
going nowhere.  It can’t get the 60 votes needed to
prevent a Republican promised filibuster, and votes
cast in both Houses are to deceive voters, not get
action. They’re made knowing they’re safe with George
Bush promising to veto any change of course and can
make it stick.

The wars will thus continue to progress in an endless
cycle of more spending with no results beyond growing
deficits, intensifying public anger, greater violence
on the ground, and defeats getting worse as the
conflicts drag on.  George Bush calls it “progress.  I
know we can succeed in Iraq, and I know we must” he
said on July 12.  Incredibly, he claimed it on eight
trivial military benchmarks under US control, blaming
eight more important political failures on the Iraqi
puppet government in charge of little more than
cleaning daily rubble and dead bodies off streets. He
added results to date are a mixed bag and overall it’s
too early to pass judgment - after over four
disastrous years of failure and a conflict longer in
duration than WW II when war raged on three continents
against formidable enemies, and it was no simple task
beating them.

It again proves this man is unchallenged as a world
champion serial liar.  By now, he may believe some of
his own lies the way writer Alex Cockburn said Ronald
Reagan believed his.  “Truth (for the great
fabricator) was what he happened to be saying at the
time. He (and Bush) went one better than George
Washington in that he couldn’t tell a lie and he
couldn’t tell the truth, since he couldn’t tell the
difference between the two.” 

There is a difference, however, between the two
deceivers.  During his first term at least, Reagan (as
a former actor, albeit a B-rated one) did a reasonable
job impersonating a president. He could find his
“mark” and read his lines. George Bush never rose to
that level even as Texas governor or any other time in
his life, and when it comes to lying, he can’t stop
doing it even when he knows the difference.  He proved
it July 12 in his ludicrous portrayal of the true
state of things in Iraq. It’s part of his desperate
effort for new congressional funding in even greater
amounts.  To get it, he ignores growing public
disenchantment and deep revulsion about a criminal
lost cause enterprise launched and continued on the
basis of lies.

That notwithstanding, Reid and other Democrats have
their grandiose notions of mission shift.  It’s to
avoid “a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq” with
legislation he’ll propose calling for permanent
occupation forces on the ground for the spurious
notion of “conduct(ing) counterterrorism operations,
protect(ing) our assets (meaning oil) and train(ing)
Iraqi forces.”  Senate Armed Services Committee
chairman, Carl Levin is on board with him.  He’ll
support a limited troop withdrawal by late year, an
end to combat operations on the ground by April 30,
2008 with Iraqi forces taking over, and a large
remaining permanent occupation force hunkered down
inside fortified super-bases.  Never mind what Iraqis
want that excludes our presence in their country.  And
the same is true for the Afghans. 

Voices from the administration, Pentagon, Congress and
the dominant media assure they’ll be disappointed as
the top goal is salvaging America’s imperial
adventurism and mission shifting current operations
into a workable permanent occupation. Here’s why. The
Afghan and Iraq wars are for resources, primarily oil,
and in the parts of the world where more than
four-fifths of proved reserves are located. Canadian
journalist and author Linda McQuaig explains the
grandest of grand prizes is “hidden in plain sight” in
Iraq.  It’s the country’s oil treasure - the planet’s
last remaining bonanza of easily harvested
“low-hanging fruit” with more potential reserves than
Saudi Arabia, the great majority of them untapped. 

It makes the country “the most sought after real
estate on the face of the earth” according to one Wall
Street oil analyst she quoted.  Even with dated
information on its potential, it’s known Iraq has at
least 10% of dwindling world reserves.  But it’s
potential was “frozen in time” with no new development
in over two decades because of intervening wars in the
1980s, economic sanctions following the Gulf war in
1991, and the current war ongoing since March, 2003.
If the country’s potential doubles or triples, as
Saudi Arabia’s did in the last 20 years, it would, in
fact, have the world’s largest (mostly untapped)
proved reserves making Iraq too rich a prize for
America and its Big Oil allies to pass up.  It’s worth
trillions of dollars and immense geopolitical power at
a time of peak oil in the face of future dwindling
supplies, except in this resource-rich country the US
won’t ever leave as long as there’s enough of them in
the ground and region to justify staying.

It’s why the country is being turned into a giant
permanent military base protecting the ocean of oil
beneath it Washington intends to control for its Big
Oil friends and to have veto power over who gets it,
who doesn’t, and at what price.  To understand what’s
happening, consider Korea.  The US arrived in the
country in 1950 following Harry Truman’s committing
American forces to help the South after Washington’s
instigated civil war began there on June 25 that year.
Fifty-seven years later, around 37,000 troops still
remain with no intention to leave.  Washington has the
same thing in mind for Iraq.  The Pentagon set up shop
there and intends to stay. 

Below is shown, as best we know, how far advanced
we’ve come toward militarizing the country for
permanent occupation no matter how debate plays out in
Congress.  It’s all bluster providing cover for
administration policy both parties support.

Plan Iraq - Permanent Occupation

Drawdowns, withdrawal, timelines, mission shifting,
building democracy and all the other current and
long-standing phony rhetoric aside, America is in Iraq
to stay as a conqueror and occupier - that is, until
Iraqis finally kick us out as they will in time in a
part of the world long a graveyard for foreign
invaders.  But it won’t happen quickly or before
countless more thousands die, are injured, suffer
immeasurably, are displaced, and lose everything. This
is the ugly dark side of imperialism, nurtured on
conquest, unchallengeable control, and keenly focused
on destroying and permanently occupying the cradle of
civilization now smashed and planned for
dismemberment. 

In the meantime, a new “peace candidate” will become
president in January, 2009 on the strength of distant
echos of Richard Nixon’s “peace with honor” 1968
campaign and hopes history would call him a
“peacemaker.”  Instead, there were five and one-half
more years of intense war, thousands more American
deaths, and one to two million more Southeast Asian
victims in Vietnam and the secret wars in Cambodia and
Laos. 

Whatever little, if anything, a new president does at
home, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan will
remain with plans for Iraqi forces eventually to do
most of our killing and dying for us.  If or when
they’re up to it, the scheme involves US troops
staying hunkered down inside their super-bases, used
as needed outside them, with massive air power
deployed freely to slaughter innocent victims on the
ground whenever they resist what no one should ever
have to endure.  For now, Iraqis have no choice but to
bear up and fight back because it’s their misfortune
to have an ocean of “our” oil beneath their sand we
laid claim to.

Already discussed is Iraq’s importance as the planet’s
last remaining “low-hanging fruit” bonanza of mostly
untapped oil riches worth trillions of dollars as the
key reason America came to stay.  The US military
arrived in March, 2003 and dug in for the long haul
with fixed military installations around the country.
Dick Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton, got most
of the huge no-bid contracts, worth many billions, to
war-profiteer and build them, irrespective of its
outlandish record of waste, fraud and abuse.

As of May, 2005, US forces were operating out of 106
bases around the country from an original estimated
120 sites.  They range in size from the huge Main
Operating Base (MOB) Camp Victory complex near Baghdad
airport where thousands of American troops are
stationed to smaller ones known as Forward Operation
Sites (FOS) that are still major installations.  In
addition, there are many Cooperative Security
Locations (CSL) that are small outposts for as few as
500 personnel, a number of prisons and detention
facilities, and an original dozen sites given to Iraqi
military or police units that now likely number many
more.

Reports vary, and much remains secret, about the
administration and Pentagon’s current and future
construction plans for Iraq. What is known is $18
billion earlier was allocated for in-country work that
includes base installations, the US Embassy and
whatever other occupation facilities are intended.
The current figure is likely much higher. It’s also
known US engineers are focusing on building 14 large
“enduring bases” for extended encampments for the tens
of thousands of US forces there now and future
replacements. 

Professor Emeritus Jules Dufour of the University of
Quebec, Canada discussed “The Worldwide Network of US
Military Bases” in his July 1, 2007 article posted on
Global Research.ca.  It included detailed information
plus maps and much more on what he called “the
Worldwide development of US military power (in place)
to view the (entire) Earth surface as a vast territory
to conquer, occupy and exploit (for giant US corporate
behemoths it’s in league with).”  He characterizes the
scheme as a process of “Humanity….being controlled
and enslaved by this Network of US military bases.” He
and Chalmers Johnson believe they number 1000 or more
that, according to Johnson, were in 153 countries as
of September, 2001 and now likely in 160 or more.
There are also many other secret, espionage, and other
bases jointly used in many countries with their hosts.

Dufour says post-9/11, the US built 14 new bases in
the Persian Gulf region.  It’s also involved “in
construction and/or reinforcement of 20 bases (106
structured units as a whole) in Iraq” plus others in
Afghanistan and other Central Asian former Soviet bloc
countries and elsewhere to encircle and control both
regions’ strategic resources, mainly oil, and the
pipeline routes needed to transport it.

Iraq bases are located or are being built around
Baghdad, Mosul, Taji, Balad, Kirkuk, Nasiriyah,
Tikrit, Fallujah and Irbil.  There are also plans to
rebuild and improve Baghdad, Mosul and other airfields
as well as rebuild roads and other essential
infrastructure strategically needed for occupation.
There are no plans to help the Iraqi people left on
their own.  They have the barest of essential
services, and infrastructure to provide them, like
functioning hospitals, medications, electricity, clean
water, safe food to eat, fuel, schools, and most
everything else.

Most important for the planned long haul will be four
to six or more super-sized bases on the order of small
towns with their own neighborhoods and kinds of
amenities found in typical US ones.  Inside them, it’s
hard distinguishing between Iraq and America unless
more sophisticated and better aimed rocket and mortar
rounds strike nearby that’s becoming more common.

The biggest of these bases so far is the huge Balad
one. It houses the major Air Force operation in the
country, including its new spacious, state of the art,
“Kingpin” air traffic control center dividing the
country’s airspace into “kill boxes,” called the
Common Grid Reference System. The largest Army
logistical support center is here as well, and it’s
also where thousands of civilian contractors, in
neighborhoods known as “KBR-land,” are based with all
the comforts of home for them and military personnel
when it’s quiet inside. The so-called secret Combined
Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF) is also
at Balad.  It’s kept behind “especially high walls”
for privacy and seclusive separation from other
operations based there.

The al-Asad airbase is the largest marine encampment
in the country located in western Anbar province where
resistance to US occupying forces has been stiffest.
It, too, has a hometown feel with similar amenities to
the country’s other major bases intended to be
permanent.  While the Pentagon won’t admit it, four
super-bases were operating last year with plans likely
for at least two more.  In addition, it was planned,
but now not certain, that British forces would
maintain a permanent military presence in the south
around Basra where it’s now based.  If Britain pulls
out, as its public demands, the Pentagon will move in
and likely expand the facilities with at least another
super-sized one for that strategically oil-rich part
of the country.  They’ll need it as the Brits are no
more in control there than US forces anywhere else.
Their 2006 Operation Sinbad flopped with militias on
the ground in full control.

Nonetheless, America came to Iraq to stay as long as
the Middle East is resource-rich and the greatest
untapped portion by far is in Iraq.  But history shows
the best-laid plans don’t always work out as intended.
Occupiers aren’t welcome anywhere with Iraq and
Afghanistan particularly adept at expelling earlier
ones that tried and failed, including the British from
both countries who should know better.  Journalist
Felicity Arbuthnot notes on Global Research.ca July 14
that on this day in 1958, “the Iraqi army toppled the
British (post WW I-imposed) royal regime, which had
opened the door wide for Western monopolies to plunder
the country’s oil wealth under unjust concession.”
Her message to modern-day plunderers: “Listen to
history.”

Permanency may only be in the eyes of the beholder and
may end much sooner than planned. Our super-bases,
with all their size, security and comforts of home,
may become no more permanent than their
mega-predecessors in Danang, Cam Rahn Bay and the
Saigon embassy (a miniature compared to the
Vatican-sized behemoth in Baghdad’s Green Zone) where
the last remnants of US presence in Vietnam were
helicoptered from its rooftop in defeat and
humiliation.  It forced us to give up what we
intending keeping unchallenged with visions as
conquerors no different than today. 

In the end, we abandoned them because we were beaten
and had no other choice.  What a determined
third-world Asian country did 30 years ago to the
world’s strongest superpower, Middle East and Central
Asian ones are doing today to the only remaining one
slipping fast and running out of excuses why. 

It’s just a matter of time before history repeats with
the same result. Iraqis and Afghans believe it and
intend to prove it again.  Too bad Washington
hard-liners know little history and haven’t figured it
out.  One day they will.  They’re just slow to catch
on.  Ruling empires never see the tide turning and
that they’re swimming against it.  George Bush’s
America is no different. It bit off more than it can
swallow and will end the same as others wrecked on the
shoals of their own hubris. 

The scene is playing out in the graveyard of other
imperial powers in the Middle East and Central Asia.
It just remains for the final chapter to be written
ending rest in peace unless Americans locate their
cajones and write their own version first.  It has to
reject corrupted power politics; remove the criminal
class; restore the rule of law; place the rights of
humanity and democratic values above wealth and
privilege; and end forever the hellish wars fought for
them.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour
on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.