Bill Arnold wrote:
These reports talk about 14 permanent bases altogether
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040323-enduring-bases.htm
The above link is to an article published by the Chicago
Tribune back on March 23, 2004. A lot has changed since then,
especially the
level of support from the American people towards the war/occupation
in Iraq.
That's why I included the 2nd link, with the title: "If the U.S. is
ultimately leaving Iraq, why is the military building 'permanent'
bases?" which says it was "reviewed 5/6/06". At the very least, this
research begs the question "what's going on with those permanent
bases?". And of course a half-billion dollar "Mall of America size"
embassy is in and of itself a permanent base.
http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/bases.htm
Perhaps the below links provides some clue as to what may have been
planned in the way of a long term American military presence in the ME.
The Bush Administration has too many neocons in high Cabinet, DOD, and
Pentagon position. The neocons are a bunch of Zionist war zealot with
an obsession to protect Israel at all cost from her ME enemies, so I
think the neocons envisioned a long term US present in the middle east
with eventual regime change in Iran and Syria, in addition to the regime
change that has taken place in Iraq. I think the DOD and the pentagon
have budgeted a lot of line items under one category and then spent the
money for new weapon and other military items, and much of the money
appropriated under the emergency measure of the Patriot Act for the war
on terror/Iraq never even hit the budget, so financially the books are a
mess and who knows where the US really stands financially.
The Bush Administration is running out of time and is not nearly as far
along in its scheduled neocon agenda as planned. The Bush
Administrations/neocon link with the Radical Religious Righter has began
to deteriorate, its attempts to amend the constitution with anti-gay and
anti-abortion constitutional amendment have failed, its attempt to
dismantle Social Security and the Federal Income Tax System have also
failed, attempts to kill the senate filibuster and put really extreme
Supreme Court Justices on the bench have failed, attempts to bankrupt
the country have failed, attempts to unify the Republican party into a
permanent majority party of partisan legislator who represent the wishes
of the executive branch instead of the people has started to break up,
and the country is beginning to come back together again form the
divisions created by the neocons using hot button issues like the threat
of terrorism, limits on American privacy rights, gay marriage, abortion,
and the war/occupation of Iraq as a wedge issues to divide and conquer
our constitutional government.
The shaping of the ME into a US and Israel good neighbor though military
action followed by regime changes has proved to be much more difficult
than the neocon ever imagined, and have exhausted our troop and spread
our military personnel much thiner than originally envisioned, and who
would want to volunteer for the military given current risks and
conditions in Iraq? It has also provided a motivation for America to
begin a long journey towards becoming energy indepented.
It look to me like we Americans will soon be able to take back our
country, establish true democracy once again, and put the country back
on a more sane and stable course.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/03/enduring_bases_iraq.html
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2323/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901090.html
Regards,
LelandJ
<clipped>
The American people are still processing what has happened
just as fast as they can. The process goes in steps like 1) Denial,
2)
Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Acceptance, a lot like someone who is
dieing. Until
America processes through to accepting what has happened, not
much can be done, but in time the truth will need to be brought to
light to write a true history of this period in America.
Time is not our friend. Once things start to go downhill, as is
happening, it's imperative to get off the failed track as quickly as
possible. One cannot overstate the importance of psychology in this
regard. Our enemy is still 'down' psychologically. If we give him reason
to be emboldened, his euphoria will spread. If we really want that war
to end, we can't let this happen. But we can't win it alone. To get the
support we need we must have help, and that will not be forthcoming
without an attitude change.
I was stationed at Binh Thuy Air Base, Vietnam, during 1967
and 1968, so I experience the TET offensive that started in early Feb
1968, very up close and personal. It took the TET offensive before
American began
coming to terms with the futility of it all and the Vietnam era was
written down in history for posterity. Here is a link as a little
reminder of the Vietnam era:
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/3219.html
To think that lesson was so quickly forgotten only denigrates the
sacrifices of so many people on both sides.
Bill
[excessive quoting removed by server]
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