Bush says 50 years in Iraq
This should come as no surprise .. somebody's got to stay and enforce our oil contracts. We'll be in Iraq only as long as it has oil Exxon can sell and Halliburton can pump. Once it has been sucked dry, it will suddenly become a moral directive for us to remove our troops.
From AP: May 30, WASHINGTON - President Bush envisions a long-term U.S.troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.
The comparison was offered as the Pentagon announced the completion of the troop buildup ordered by Bush in January. The last of about 21,500 combat troops to arrive were an Army brigade in Baghdad and a Marine unit heading into the Anbar province in western Iraq.[..]
Bush can compare South Korea and Iraq all he wants -- it's apples and oranges. Iraq doesn't have a dang thing in common with South Korea. SK is almost 100% ethnically Korean. They don't fight over theological differences. And, while they have a militarized and insane neighbor to their north -- just as Iraq has a militarized and insane neighbor to their east -- SK has no history of invading that neighbor.
Well, it's no secret that we're building a huge US embassy in Iraq -- Bush's palace, as the locals call it. Concrete hulks of a 21-building complex are rising from Baghdad's ashes. It is projected to cost $592 million, have a yearly operating cost of $1.2 billion .. covers 104 acres and will house more than 3500 diplomatic and support staff. They'll have their own sports center, beauty parlor and swimming pool .. not to mention Starbucks and Krispy Kreme, no doubt. Each of the six residential blocks will contain more than 600 apartments. If the 16 ft. thick perimeter walls don’t keep the locals at bay, then the built-in surface-to-air missile station should.
If that doesn't say "We’re here to stay" I don't know what does.....
Bush will try to keep troops on the ground even when their presence makes his "goals" even harder to achieve -- i.e., reconciliation between Iraq’s factions. He will always find some other reason for staying, no matter how weak .. because staying is itself the objective.
The creation and maintenance of a long-term military presence is the only policy that makes sense of everything Bush has done so far.
Also -- we can't leave now because the terrorists would follow us home. All they have to do is follow the trail of downed choppers and voila! .. they'll be on Main Street USA in no time flat.
And another thing -- the Bushies keep telling us how all the surge troops won't even be all there in Iraq until July, so it's way too early to talk about success or failure. Now we learn that the combat troops have all arrived -- it's only May.
See, another lie, the Big Surge Lie -- the troops have not all arrived yet. The Truth -- they extended the tours of all the troops in Iraq. So, with no real rotation taking place, the amount of troops currently in Iraq is at an all time high. That is why the number getting killed is rising sharply. More sitting duck targets between two factions in a Civil War .. and each side itchy to kill Americans.
