Do You Know What We Don’t Know?

The Bush administration’s “Iraq Plan” is not public knowledge!
Read about “Enduring Camps!”
by Charlie Leck

Many have been critical of the Bush administration for not having created an exit strategy for the Iraq War. Turns out we were wrong to criticize. The Bush administration had and has no intention to leave Iraq.

What fools we are!

Read the following from AlterNet and you’ll see just why John McCain could say so lightly that we may be in Iraq for 100 years. That’s the plan, you dummy!

I’m left aghast by this information and wonder how I missed it and didn’t catch any of the hints.

All of this will explain why it is so vital to the conservatives that they win the next election. They will pull out all the stops to do so – I mean all the stops! They have a 100 year plan to protect.

The following is only a little bit of an outstanding article by Tom Engelhardt. He writes a blog regularly at Tomdispatch.com. Try your best to read the entire article.

“No, there was never an exit strategy from Iraq because the Bush administration never intended to leave -- and still doesn't: Critics of the war have regularly gone after the Bush administration for its lack of planning, including its lack of an ‘exit strategy.’ In this, they miss the point. The Bush administration arrived in Iraq with four mega-bases on the drawing boards. These were meant to undergird a future American garrisoning of that country and were to house at least 30,000 American troops, as well as U.S. air power, for the indefinite future. The term used for such places wasn't ‘permanent base,’ but the more charming and euphemistic ‘enduring camp.’ (In fact, as we learned recently, the Bush administration refuses to define any American base on foreign soil anywhere on the planet, including ones in Japan for over 60 years, as permanent.) Those four monster bases in Iraq (and many others) were soon being built at the cost of multibillions and are, even today, being significantly upgraded. In October 2007, for instance, National Public Radio's defense correspondent Guy Raz visited Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad, which houses about 40,000 American troops, contractors, and Defense Department civilian employees, and described it as ‘one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the center of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few decades.’

“These mega-bases, like ‘Camp Cupcake’ (al-Asad Air Base), nicknamed for its amenities, are small town-sized with massive facilities, including PXs, fast-food outlets, and the latest in communications. They have largely been ignored by the American media and so have played no part in the debate about Iraq in this country, but they are the most striking on-the-ground evidence of the plans of an administration that simply never expected to leave. To this day, despite the endless talk about drawdowns and withdrawals, that hasn't changed. In fact, the latest news about secret negotiations for a future Status of Forces Agreement on the American presence in that country indicates that U.S. officials are calling for ‘an open-ended military presence’ and ‘no limits on numbers of U.S. forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term U.S. security agreements with other countries.’"

And read to about the new embassy we are building in Baghdad. Holy, friggin’ fiddlesticks! Can you believe this?

“No, our new embassy in Baghdad is not an ‘embassy’: When, for more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, you construct a complex -- regularly described as ‘Vatican-sized’ -- of at least 20 ‘blast-resistant’ buildings on 104 acres of prime Baghdadi real estate, with ‘fortified working space’ and a staff of at least 1,000 (plus several thousand guards, cooks, and general factotums), when you deeply embunker it, equip it with its own electricity and water systems, its own anti-missile defense system, its own PX, and its own indoor and outdoor basketball courts, volleyball court, and indoor Olympic-size swimming pool, among other things, you haven't built an ‘embassy’ at all. What you've constructed in the heart of the heart of another country is more than a citadel, even if it falls short of a city-state. It is, at a minimum, a monument to Bush administration dreams of domination in Iraq and in what its adherents once liked to call ‘the Greater Middle East.’

“Just about ready to open, after the normal construction mishaps in Iraq, it will constitute the living definition of diplomatic overkill. It will, according to a Senate estimate, now cost Americans $1.2 billion a year just to be "represented" in Iraq. The ‘embassy’ is, in fact, the largest headquarters on the planet for the running of an occupation. Functionally, it is also another well-fortified enduring camp with the amenities of home. Tell that to the Shiite militiamen now mortaring the Green Zone as if it were ... enemy-occupied territory.”

Go view the MSNBC video on this compound. It will astound you. The reporter concludes the piece by saying the compound “makes it look like the U.S. will be occupying Iraq forever.” That’s the plan!

There are 27 buildings built on 104 acres and would house up to 600 people. It has a huge swimming pool, gyms, lockerrooms and elegant dining facilities and conference rooms. It has so far cost over 700 million dollars. Now, the administration, before even moving in, wants it enlarged so that it can house the Iraq Commanding U.S. General and his troops – up to 2,000 more. Before this change it was estimated it will cost 2 billion dollars a year to operate the facility.

Are we crazy, or what? If you don’t think the neo-cons are out of control, your brain has gone fluffy.

Please, send this link to the AlterNet article on to your friends. This is insanity!