WHITE HOUSE ON IRAQ: "MAINTAINING A FORCE OF
ROUGHLY 50,000 TROOPS THERE . . . FOR DECADES"

Buried deep in this New York Times article, courtesy of Think Progress, courtesy of Eschaton:

U.S. Seeking New Strategy for
Buttressing Iraq's Government

Mr. Bush on Friday made clear that the American commitment to the country will be long-term. Officials say the administration has begun to look at the costs of maintaining a force of roughly 50,000 troops there for years to come, roughly the size of the American presence maintained in the Philippines and Korea for decades after those conflicts.

But no decisions have been made, and Mr. Bush has carefully sidestepped any discussion of a long-term presence, insisting that American forces will be in the country only as long as the Iraqi government wants them there. Mr. Bush's aides said the meeting was not intended to focus on troop levels. But in many ways, that subject is the subtext of the entire discussion.

Click here for the rest.

And given that the US established Iraqi government is extraordinarily weak, which seems purposeful, and whose existence is completely dependent on our government's aid and assistance, it is likely that we won't be formally asked to leave for an extremely long time, which is, I believe, exactly how the White House has planned it. As the Think Progress piece observed, the GOP Congress is in on the act, too, paving the legal way for the permanent US bases that are being built in Iraq right now. Slowly but surely, and quietly, Bush is laying the rhetorical groundwork for what will amount to a permanent occupation of an oil-rich nation right smack dab in middle of the Persian Gulf region. And that's what they've wanted all along.

This has been obvious for a couple of years now. Granted, it defies conventional wisdom, but that doesn't really matter too much anymore. Noam Chomsky and others fairly early on observed that the Iraq invasion had to be about oil because none of the offered motivations make any sense. There were no WMDs. There was no connection with Al-Qaeda. A brief glance at US foreign policy overall plainly shows that the American elite couldn't care less about democracy or human rights abroad--actually, they're rather indifferent to those issues at home, too. In short, because all the explanations are lies, there must be another motivation. One must ask what the biggest benefit for the US elite coming out of Iraq is, and the answer is quick in coming. A strong US presence in the region essentially gives the government control over world oil supplies, which amounts to control over the world economy, which amounts to control over the world. This is a pretty big prize. And I'm not talking about getting the oil for ourselves: rather, it's about controlling the oil, who has access to it, and how much. The White House always meant to establish a permanent presence in Iraq.

Now, like Michael Corleone in Godfather III, the Republicans are attempting to make this criminal enterprise aboveboard and seemingly legal, moral even, suggesting that we're only there because the country is so unstable. "We're legitimate businessmen!!!" Not true. We're there because we're starting a new racket like the mafiosi we are, a racket that will shore up our power as boss of all bosses. And by "we" I mean "them." We're just shleps who live in the neighborhood.

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