Can You Say "Permanent Bases"?

From TomDispatch, courtesy of Washington Monthly's blog Political Animal, courtesy of the Daily Kos:

How can anybody tell if the Bush administration is actually withdrawing from Iraq or not? Sometimes, when trying to cut through a veritable fog of misinformation and disinformation, it helps to focus on something concrete. In the case of Iraq, nothing could be more concrete -- though less generally discussed in our media -- than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has long been building in that country. Quite literally multi-billions of dollars have gone into them. In a prestigious engineering magazine in late 2003, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, was already speaking proudly of several billion dollars being sunk into base construction ("the numbers are staggering"). Since then, the base-building has been massive and ongoing.

In a country in such startling disarray, these bases, with some of the most expensive and advanced communications systems on the planet, are like vast spaceships that have landed from another solar system. Representing a staggering investment of resources, effort, and geostrategic dreaming, they are the unlikeliest places for the Bush administration to hand over willingly to even the friendliest of Iraqi governments.

And

There are at least four such "super-bases" in Iraq, none of which have anything to do with "withdrawal" from that country. Quite the contrary, these bases are being constructed as little American islands of eternal order in an anarchic sea. Whatever top administration officials and military commanders say -- and they always deny that we seek "permanent" bases in Iraq -– facts-on-the-ground speak with another voice entirely. These bases practically scream "permanency."

Unfortunately, there's a problem here. American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words "permanent," "bases," and "Iraq" should never be placed in the same sentence, not even in the same paragraph; in fact, not even in the same news report.

Click here for the rest.

In terms of my post about journalist "objectivity" and narrative construction from a few days ago, it seems that the storyline here is that, despite a great deal of unreported evidence to the contrary, the Pentagon and White House's goal is to eventually get out of Iraq when it's "democracy" is ready to roll. Obviously, that's just a storyline. I've been saying for some months now that I feel pretty certain that the US will never leave Iraq, not as long as the world economy depends on oil. Look at it this way, assuming that the neo-con architects of the invasion aren't as stupid as the missing WMDs or futility of Iraqi democracy might suggest, one must conclude that those motivations have always been cover stories, and that the real goal in Iraq is something else. And what might that be? It really is about the oil. Not in a simple now-it's-our-oil way, but in a corner-the-market way. That is, establishing a strong and lasting US military presence in the middle of the world's largest oil deposits essentially gives the American elite control over the spigot. Everybody's spigot. The kind of influence, sway, and leverage such a move gives the US in all dealings with other nations is unimaginable. The neo-cons have effectively transmuted America's unsurpassed military power into vast economic power. In the long term the US will have the ability virtually control the world's flow of oil, control all oil markets. And control of oil means control of everything because everything depends on oil. That's why we're building permanent bases in Iraq, and that's why not even a change of administration, even from Republican to Democrat, will make one bit of difference. The prize is just too tempting.

We'll have bases in Iraq for the rest of my life and longer. Sick, isn't it?

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