[Peace-discuss] Permanent bases in Iraq (AKA Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States)

Mon Dec 3 16:53:11 CST 2007

And who believes that Congress will ever do anything to stop this war or that the 2008 Presidential 
election will matter a hoot towards this end?

----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
From:    "Michael Shapiro" <mshapiro51 at gmail.com>
To:      "Peace Discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Permanent bases in Iraq (AKA Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States)
Date:    Mon, 3 Dec 2007 05:13:58 +0000

> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174869/a_basis_for_enduring_relationships_in_ira
> q
> 
>   Tom Dispatch
> 
> posted 2007-12-02 20:53:31
> Tomgram: A Basis for Enduring Relationships in Iraq
> 
> [*Note for Tomdispatch readers:* *For anyone interested in the often ignored
> but crucial subject of the U.S. garrisoning of the planet and the Pentagon's
> system of imperial basing, there is a single indispensable book: Chalmers
> Johnson's The Sorrows of
> Empire<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805077979/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
> volume two of his Blowback Trilogy. The third volume, Nemesis, The Last Days
> of the American
> Republic<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805079114/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
> is almost as relevant on basing (and riveting in its own right). Tom*]
> 
> Iraq as a Pentagon Construction Site *How the Bush Administration "Endures"*
> By Tom Engelhardt
> 
> The title of the
> agreement<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071126-11.html#>,
> signed by President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki in a "video
> conference" <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/26/5468/> last
> week, and carefully labeled as a "non-binding" set of principles for further
> negotiations, was a mouthful: a "Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term
> Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and
> the United States of America." Whew!
> 
> Words matter, of course. They seldom turn up by accident in official
> documents or statements. Last week, in the first reports on this
> "declaration," one of those words that matter caught my attention. Actually,
> it wasn't in the declaration itself, where the key phrase was "long-term
> relationship" (something in the lives of private individuals that falls just
> short of a marriage), but in a
> "fact-sheet"<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071126-1.html>iss
> ued
> by the White House. Here's the relevant line: "Iraq's leaders have
> asked for an *enduring* relationship with America, and we seek an
> *enduring*relationship with a democratic Iraq." Of course, "enduring"
> there bears the
> same relationship to permanency as "long-term relationship" does to
> marriage.
> 
> In a number of the early news reports, that word "enduring," part of the
> "enduring relationship" that the Iraqi leadership supposedly "asked for,"
> was put 
> into<http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/blog/2007/11/white_house_iraq
> _wont_have_to.html>(or
> near) the mouths of "Iraqi leaders" or of the
> Iraqi prime 
> minister<http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3914932>himself.
> It also achieved a certain prominence in the post-declaration
> "press gaggle" conducted by the man coordinating this process out of the
> Oval Office, the President's so-called War Tsar, Gen. Douglas Lute. He said
> of the document: "It signals a commitment of both their government and the
> United States to an enduring relationship based on mutual interests."
> 
> In trying to imagine any Iraqi leader actually requesting that "enduring"
> relationship, something kept nagging at me. After all, those mutual vows of
> longevity were to be taken in a well publicized civil ceremony in a world in
> which, when it comes to the American presidential embrace,
> don't-ask/don't-tell is usually the preferred
> course<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IL01Ak01.html>of
> action for foreign leaders. Finally, I remembered where I had seen
> that
> word "enduring" before in a situation that also involved a "long-term
> relationship." It had been four-and-a-half years earlier and not coming out
> of the mouths of Iraqi officials either.
> 
> Back in April 2003, just after Baghdad fell to American troops, Thom Shanker
> and Eric Schmitt reported <http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/042103B.shtml> on
> the front page of the *New York Times* that the Pentagon had launched its
> invasion the previous month with plans for four "permanent bases" in out of
> the way parts of Iraq already on the drawing board. Since then, the Pentagon
> has indeed sunk billions of dollars into building those mega-bases (with a
> couple of extra ones thrown in) at or near the places mentioned by Shanker
> and Schmitt.
> 
> When questioned by reporters at the time about whether such "permanent
> bases" were in the works, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
> insisted<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A72
> 64-2003Apr21&>that
> the
> U.S. was "unlikely to seek any permanent or ï¿½long-term' bases in Iraq" --
> and that was that. The *Times'* piece essentially went down the
> mainstream-media memory hole. On this subject, the official position of the
> Bush administration has never changed. Just last week, for instance, General
> Lute slipped up, in response to a question at his press gaggle. The exchange
> went like this:
> 
> "Q: And permanent bases?
> 
> "GENERAL LUTE: Likewise. That's another dimension of continuing U.S. support
> to the government of Iraq, and will certainly be a key item for negotiation
> next year."
> 
>  White House spokesperson Dana Perino quickly issued a denial, saying: "We
> do not seek permanent bases in Iraq."
> 
> Back in 2003, Pentagon officials, already seeking to avoid that potentially
> explosive "permanent" tag, plucked "enduring" out of the military lexicon
> and began referring to such bases, charmingly enough, as "enduring
> camps."<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/59774/a_permanent_basis_for_withdrawal_>
> And
> the word remains with us -- connected to bases and occupations
> anywhere.
> For instance, of a planned expansion of Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, a
> Col. Jonathan Ives
> told<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/07/news/afghan.php>an AP
> reporter recently, "We've grown in our commitment to Afghanistan by
> putting another brigade (of troops) here, and with that we know that we're
> going to have an enduring presence. So this is going to become a long-term
> base for us, whether that means five years, 10 years -- we don't know."
> 
> Still, whatever they were called, the bases went up on an impressive scale,
> massively fortified, sometimes 15-20 square miles in area, housing up to
> tens of thousands of troops and private contractors, with multiple bus
> routes, traffic lights, fast-food restaurants, PXs, and other amenities of
> home, and reeking of the kind of investment that practically shouts out for,
> minimally, a relationship of a distinctly "enduring" nature.
> 
> *The Facts on Land -- and Sea*
> 
> These were part of what should be considered the facts on the ground in
> Iraq, though, between April 2003 and the present, they were rarely reported
> on or debated in the mainstream in the U.S. But if you place those
> mega-bases (not to speak of the more than
> 100<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100
> 611_pf.html>smaller
> ones built at one point or another) in the context of early Bush
> administration plans for the Iraqi military, things quickly begin to make
> more sense.
> 
> Remember, Iraq is essentially the hot seat at the center of the Middle East.
> It had, in the previous two-plus decades fought an eight-year war with
> neighboring Iran, invaded neighboring Kuwait, and been invaded itself. And
> yet, the new Coalition Provisional Authority, run by the President's
> personal envoy, L. Paul Bremer III, promptly disbanded the Iraqi military.
> This is now accepted as a goof of the first order when it came to sparking
> an insurgency. But, in terms of Bush administration planning, it was no
> mistake at all.
> 
> At the time, the Pentagon made it quite clear that its plan for a future
> Iraqi military was for a force of
> 40,000<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E6D6153BF937A15755C0A9
> 659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print>lightly
> armed troops -- meant to do little more than patrol the country's
> borders. (Saddam Hussein's army had been something like a
> 600,000-man<http://www.senate.gov/%7Elevin/newsroom/release.cfm?id=214720>force.
> )
> It was, in other words, to be a
> *Military Lite* -- and there was essentially to be no Iraqi air force. In
> other words, in one of the more heavily armed and tension-ridden regions of
> the planet, Iraq was to become a Middle Eastern Costa Rica -- if, that is,
> you didn't assume that the U.S. Armed Forces, from those four "enduring
> camps" somewhere outside Iraq's major cities, including a giant air
> base<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR200602030
> 2994_pf.html>at
> Balad, north of Baghdad, and with the back-up help of
> U.S. Naval forces in the Persian Gulf, were to serve as the real Iraqi
> military for the foreseeable future.
> 
> Again, it's necessary to put these facts on the ground in a larger -- in
> this case, pre-invasion -- geopolitical context. From the first Gulf War on,
> Saudi Arabia, the largest producer of energy on the planet, was being
> groomed as the American military bastion in the heart of the Middle East.
> But the Saudis grew uncomfortable -- think here, the claims of Osama bin
> Laden and Co. that U.S. troops were defiling the Kingdom and its holy places
> -- with the Pentagon's elaborate enduring camps on its territory. Something
> had to give -- and it wasn't going to be the American military presence in
> the Middle East. The answer undoubtedly seemed clear enough to top Bush
> administration officials. As an anonymous American diplomat
> told<http://www.fpif.org/papers/oil.html>the
> *Sunday Herald* of Scotland back in October 2002, "A rehabilitated Iraq is
> the only sound long-term strategic alternative to Saudi Arabia. It's not
> just a case of swopping horses in mid-stream, the impending U.S. regime
> change in Baghdad is a strategic necessity."
> 
> As those officials imagined it -- and as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
> Wolfowitz predicted -- by the fall of 2003, major American military
> operations in the region would have been re-organized around Iraq, even as
> American forces there would be drawn down to perhaps 30,000-40,000 troops
> stationed eternally at those "enduring camps." In addition, a group of Iraqi
> secular exiles, friendly to the United States, would be in power in Baghdad,
> backed by the occupation and ready to open up the Iraqi economy, especially its
> oil 
> industry<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174779/michael_schwartz_the_prize_of_ir
> aqi_oil>to
> Western (particularly American) multinationals. Americans and their
> allies and private contractors would, quite literally, have free run of the
> country, the equivalent of nineteenth century colonial extraterritoriality
> (something "legally" institutionalized in June 2004, thanks to Order
> 17<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174840>,
> issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, just before it officially
> turned over "sovereignty" to the Iraqis); and, sooner or later, a Status of
> Forces Agreement or SOFA would be "negotiated" that would define the rights
> of American troops garrisoned in that country.
> 
> At that point, the U.S. would have successfully repositioned itself
> militarily in relation to the oil heartlands of the planet. It would also
> have essentially encircled a second member of the "axis of evil," Iran (once
> you included the numerous new U.S. bases that had been
> built<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GC30Ag01.html>and were
> being expanded in occupied Afghanistan as part of the ongoing war
> against the Taliban). It would be triumphant and dominant and, with its
> Israeli ally, militarily beyond challenge in the region. The cowing of,
> collapse of, or destruction of the Syrian and Iranian regimes would surely
> follow in short order.
> 
> Of course, much of this never came about as planned. It turned out that,
> once the Sunni insurgency gained traction, the Bush administration had
> little choice but to reconstitute a sizeable, if still relatively lightly
> armed, Iraqi military (as a largely Shiite force) and then, more recently,
> arm Sunni militias as well, possibly opening the way for future clashes of a
> major nature. It had to accept a Shiite regime locked inside the highly
> fortified Green Zone of the Iraqi capital that was religious, sectarian,
> largely powerless, and allied to some degree with
> Iran<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174838>.
> It had to accept chaos, significant and unexpected casualties, continual
> urban warfare, and an enormous strain and drain on its armed forces (as well
> as a black hole of distraction from other global issues). None of this had
> been predicted, or imagined, by Bush's top officials.
> 
> On the other hand, the Bush administration has demonstrated significant
> "endurance" of its own, especially when it came to the linked issues of oil
> and bases. In a recent report for *Harper's Magazine*, "The Black Box,
> Inside Iraq's Oil Machine," Luke Mitchell describes traveling the southern
> Iraqi oil field of Rumaila with a petroleum engineer working for Foster
> Wheeler, a Houston engineering firm hired by the U.S. Army Corps of
> Engineers "to oversee much of the oilfield reconstruction," and protected by
> private guards employed by the British security company Erinys. He describes
> what's left of the Iraqi oil industry after decades of war, sanctions, civil
> war, sabotage, and black-market theft -- a run-down industrial plant with a
> rusting delivery system that, at a technical level, is now largely in the
> hands of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Energy, the State
> Department, and private contractors like KBR, the former division of
> Halliburton. At the most basic level, he reports that many of "Iraq's native
> oil professionals," who heroically patched up and held together a broken
> system in the years after the first Gulf War, have (along with so many other
> Iraqi professionals) fled the country. He writes:
> 
> "The *Wall Street Journal* in 2006 called this flight a 'petroleum exodus'
> and reported that about a hundred oil workers had been murdered since the
> war began and that 'of the top hundred of so managers running the Iraqi oil
> ministry and its branches in 2003, about two-thirds are no longer at their
> jobs.' Now most of the [oil] engineers in Iraq are from Texas and Oklahoma."
> 
>  Similarly, in Baghdad, the government of Prime Minister Maliki is not
> expected to handle the crucial energy problems of its country alone. Here's
> a relevant (if well-buried) passage from a
> recent<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/washington/25policy.html?_r=1&ei=5088&e
> n=7b03ec702b26838a&ex=1354078800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slog
> in>
> *New York Times* piece on the subject: "Earlier this month, the White House
> dispatched several senior aides to Baghdad to work with the Iraqis on
> specific legislative areas. They include the under secretary of state for
> economic, energy and agricultural affairs, Reuben Jeffery III, who is
> working on the budget and oil lawï¿½" This is what passes for "sovereignty" in
> present-day Iraq.
> 
> In this context, the following line of text about agreed-upon subjects for
> negotiation in last week's Bush/Maliki "declaration" caused eyebrows to be
> raised (at least abroad): "Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign
> investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the
> reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq." As the British *Guardian* put the
> matter <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/26/5468/>: "The promise
> was immediately seen as a potential bonanza for American oil companies." A BBC
> report <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7115131.stm>commented,
> "Correspondents say US investors benefiting from preferential
> treatment could earn huge profits from Iraq's vast oil reserves, causing
> widespread resentment among Iraqis." (American coverage regularly ignores or
> plays down the oil aspect of the Bush administration's Iraq policies, even
> though that country has the third largest reserves on the planet.)
> 
> *Bases, Bases Everywhere*
> 
> Among the most tenacious and enduring Bush administration facts on the
> ground are those giant bases, still largely ignored --
> with<http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/11/permanent_bases_in_iraq
> _how_ab.html?nav=rss_blog>honorable
> exceptions<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR200
> 7112802050_pf.html>--
> by the mainstream media. Thom Shanker and Cara Buckley of the
> *New York Times*, to give but one example, managed to write that paper's major
> piece<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?_r=1&pagewa
> nted=print&oref=slogin>about
> the joint "declaration" without mentioning the word "base," no less
> "permanent," and only Gen. Lute's slip made the permanence of bases a minor
> note in other mainstream reports. And yet it's not just that the building of
> bases *did* go on -- and on a remarkable scale -- but that it continues
> today.
> 
> Whatever the descriptive labels, the Pentagon, throughout this whole period,
> has continued to create, base by base, the sort of "facts" that any
> negotiations, no matter who engages in them, will need to take into account.
> And the ramping up of the already gigantic "mega-bases" in Iraq proceeds
> apace. Recent reports indicate that the Pentagon will
> call<http://iraqvote.reviewpublic.com/2007/11/28/staying-on-in-iraq/>on
> Congress to pony up another billion dollars soon enough for further
> upgrades and "improvements."
> 
> We also know that frantic construction has been under way on three new bases
> of varying sizes. The most obvious of these -- though it's seldom thought of
> this way -- is the gigantic new U.S. Embassy, possibly the largest in the
> world, being 
> built<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174789/the_mother_ship_lands_in_iraq>on
> an almost Vatican-sized plot of land inside Baghdad's Green Zone. It
> is
> meant to be a citadel, a hardened universe of its own, in, but not of, the
> Iraqi capital. In recent months, it has also turned into a construction
> nightmare <http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/20277.html>, soaking up
> another $144 million in American taxpayer monies, bringing its price tag to
> three-quarters of a billion dollars and still climbing. It is to house 1,000
> or so "diplomats," with perhaps a few thousand extra security guards and
> hired hands of every sort.
> 
> When, in the future, you read in the papers about administration plans to
> withdraw American forces to bases "outside of Iraqi urban areas," note that
> there will continue to be a major base in the heart of the Iraqi capital for
> who knows how long to come. As the Washington
> Post's<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/06/AR2007100
> 601450_pf.html>Glenn
> Kessler put it, the 21-building compound "is viewed by some officials
> as a key element of building a sustainable, long-term diplomatic presence in
> Baghdad." Presence, yes, but diplomatic?
> 
> In the meantime, a relatively small base, "Combat Outpost
> Shocker,"<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2007/09/mil-070928
> -rferl01.htm>provocatively
> placed within a few kilometers of the Iranian border, has been
> rushed to completion this fall on a mere $5 million construction contract.
> And only in the last weeks, reports have emerged on the latest U.S. base
> under construction, uniquely being built on a key oil-exporting platform in
> the waters off the southern Iraqi port of Basra and meant for the U.S. Navy
> and allies. Such a base gives meaning to this passage in the Bush/Maliki
> declaration: "Providing security assurances and commitments to the Republic
> of Iraq to deter foreign aggression against Iraq that violates its
> sovereignty and integrity of its territories, *waters*, or airspace."
> 
> As the British 
> Telegraph<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml;jsessio
> nid=P5KRTIERL15PJQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/11/17/wgulf117.xml&site=5&pa
> ge=0>described
> this multi-million dollar project: "The US-led coalition is
> building a permanent security base on Iraq's oil pumping platforms in the
> Gulf to act as the ï¿½nerve centre' of efforts to protect the country's most
> vital strategic asset." Chip Cummins of the *Wall Street Journal* summed up
> the project this way in a piece headlined, "U.S. Digs In to Guard Iraq Oil
> Exports -- Long-Term Presence Planned at Persian Gulf Terminals Viewed as
> Vulnerable": "[T]he new construction suggests that one footprint of U.S.
> military power in Iraq isn't shrinking anytime soon: American officials are
> girding for an open-ended commitment to protect the country's oil industry."
> 
> 
> Though you'd never know it from mainstream reporting, the single enduring
> fact of the Iraq War may be this constant building and upgrading of U.S.
> bases. Since the *Times* revealed those base-building plans back in the
> spring of 2003, Iraq has essentially been a vast construction site for the
> Pentagon. The American media did, in the end, come to focus on the civilian
> "reconstruction" of Iraq which, from the rebuilding of
> electricity-production facilities to the construction of a new police
> academy<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR200609
> 2702134_pf.html>has
> proved a catastrophic
> mixture<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR200608
> 0101453.html>of
> crony capitalism,
> graft <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n21/harr04_.html>, corruption, theft,
> inefficiency, and sabotage. But there has been next to no focus on the
> construction success story of the Iraq War and occupation: those bases.
> 
> In this way, whatever the disasters of its misbegotten war, the Bush
> administration has, in a sense, itself "endured" in Iraq. Now, with only a
> year left, its officials clearly hope to write that endurance and those
> "enduring camps" into the genetic code of both countries -- an "enduring
> relationship" meant to outlast January 2009 and to outflank any future
> administration. In fact, by some official projections, the bases are meant
> to be occupied for up to 50 to 60 years without ever becoming "permanent."
> 
> You can, of course, claim that the Iraqis "asked for" this new, "enduring
> relationship," as the declaration so politely suggests. It is certainly true
> that, as part of the bargain, the Bush administration is offering to defend
> its "boys" to the hilt against almost any conceivable eventuality, including
> the sort of internal coup that it has, these last years, been rumored to
> have considered launching itself.
> 
> In an attempt to make an end-run around Congress, administration officials
> continue to present what is to be negotiated as merely a typical SOFA-style
> agreement. "There are about a hundred countries around the world with which
> we have [such] bilateral defense or security cooperation agreements," Gen.
> Lute said reassuringly, indicating that this matter would be handled by the
> executive branch without significant input from Congress. The guarantees the
> Bush administration seems ready to offer the Maliki government, however,
> clearly rise to treaty
> level<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ackerman29nov29,0,3241305.story?
> coll=la-opinion-rightrail>and,
> if we had even a faintly assertive Congress, would surely require the
> advice and consent of the Senate. Iraqi officials have already made clear
> that such an agreement will have to pass through their parliament in a
> country where the idea of "enduring" U.S. bases in an "enduring"
> relationship is bound to be exceedingly unpopular.
> 
> Still, a formula for the future is obviously being put in place and, after
> more than four years of frenzied construction, the housing for it, so to
> speak, is more than ready. As the Washington Post described the
> plan<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/26/AR200711260
> 1120_pf.html>,
> "Iraqi officials said that under the proposed formula, Iraq would get full
> responsibility for internal security and U.S. troops would relocate to bases
> outside the cities. Iraqi officials foresee a long-term presence of about
> 50,000 U.S. troopsï¿½"
> 
> No matter what comes out of the mouths of Iraqi officials, though, what's
> "enduring" in all this is deeply Pentagonish and has emerged from the Bush
> administration's earliest dreams about reshaping the Middle East and
> achieving global domination of an unprecedented sort. It's a case, as the
> old Joni Mitchell song put it, of going "round and round and round in the
> circle game."
> 
> [*Note:* Spencer Ackerman has been offering especially good coverage of
> developments surrounding the recent Bush/Maliki declaration at TPM
> Muckraker<http://tpmmuckraker.com/>.
> I'd also like to offer one of my periodic statements of thanks to
> Iraq-oriented sites that give me daily aid and succor in gathering crucial
> material and analysis, especially Juan Cole's invaluable Informed
> Comment<http://www.juancole.com/>,
> Antiwar.com <http://www.antiwar.com/>, and Paul Woodward's The War in
> Context <http://www.warincontext.org/>.]
> 
> *Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the
> co-founder of the American Empire
> Project<http://www.americanempireproject.com/>.
> His book, The End of Victory
> Culture<http://www.amazon.com/dp/155849586X/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>(Uni
> versity
> of Massachusetts Press), has recently been thoroughly updated in
> a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn
> sequel in Iraq.*
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