Iraq War & Wars

The Deal for Permanent US Presence
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The Deal for Permanent US Presence
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DEATH COUNT 650,000--Oct 06
CIA Confirms War spawns Islamic Radical
Iraq for Sale--Edward Kennedy
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Iraq government death squads
Opium, Afghanistan, Bin Laden, & U.S. Policy
Democracy in Iraq
Cause of Iraq War--gen. William Clark
Marjority of the troops favor rapid exit
Milirary Base Building Reveals U.S. Plans to Stay
IRAQ WAR CAUSED BY OIL--proof, Palast
Iraq war costs $440 Billion
No Chance of Victory U.S. General Admits
U.S. DESTABILIZED REGION--Must Stay Now
Iraq war and imperialism
reconstruction? who stold the funds?
Iraq history from WWI to present
OIL-WAR PLANS BEFORE 911--document
War, Another From of Corporate Welfare
Iraq, Sunni, Shiite Struggle
General Odom on Iraq War and Isreal
Iraq War Stimulates Our Economy
U.S. Policy of Delay brought on the insurgency--Palast
Military Budget should be cut

Repeatedly in the alternative press I have been reading reports of the huge compund the US has built in Bagdah and of the bease building in other parts of the country, and that stay the course means permanent occupation.  The neoliberals are not spending billions of US dollars for to turn the bases over.  In fact, with verhy few exception, a US base remains a US base.   This article confirms what the evidence supports: a deal for the permanent US presence—jk.

 

Revealed: Secret Plan to Keep Iraq Under US Control

»

by: Patrick Cockburn, The Independent UK

at http://www.truthout.org/article/revealed-secret-plan-keep-iraq-under-us-control   

 

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors.

    A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

    The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq.  Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

    But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

    The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq - a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

    America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 - 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007.  {THERE IS ALSO AS MANY CIVILIANS THERE AS TROOPS, INCLUDING U.S. MERCENARIES--JK ) Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

    The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

    The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000 feet and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

    Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region (see http://skeptically.org/wars/id23.html).   Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans."

    Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.

    The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.

    Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now. The one Iraqi with the authority to stop deal is the majority Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.  In 2003, he forced the US to agree to a referendum on the new Iraqi constitution and the election of a parliament. But he is said to believe that loss of US support would drastically weaken the Iraqi Shia, who won a majority in parliament in elections in 2005.

    The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.

    The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.

    The signature of a security agreement, and a parallel deal providing a legal basis for keeping US troops in Iraq, is unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis. But the Kurds, who make up a fifth of the population, will probably favour a continuing American presence, as will Sunni Arab political leaders who want US forces to dilute the power of the Shia. The Sunni Arab community, which has broadly supported a guerrilla war against US occupation, is likely to be split.

 

Interview with Tom Engelhardt http://www.tomdispatch.com/p/tdvideo/engelhardt06092008

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061003415_pf.html, article on U.S. permanent presence Washington post. 

 

http://www.antiwar.com/ great site for war news.

 

 

Iraqis Condemn American Demands
Sides Negotiating U.S. Military Role

By Amit R. Paley and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 11, 2008; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061003415_pf.html

 

BAGHDAD, June 10 -- High-level negotiations over the future role of the U.S. military in Iraq have turned into an increasingly acrimonious public debate, with Iraqi politicians denouncing what they say are U.S. demands to maintain nearly 60 bases in their country indefinitely.

Top Iraqi officials are calling for a radical reduction of the U.S. military's role here after the U.N. mandate authorizing its presence expires at the end of this year. Encouraged by recent Iraqi military successes, government officials have said that the United States should agree to confine American troops to military bases unless the Iraqis ask for their assistance, with some saying Iraq might be better off without them.

"The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq," said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament's foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.  "If we can't reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, 'Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don't need you here anymore.' "

Congress has grown increasingly restive over the negotiations, which would produce a status of forces agreement setting out the legal rights and responsibilities of U.S. troops in Iraq and a broader "security framework" defining the political and military relationship between the two countries. Senior lawmakers of both parties have demanded more information and questioned the Bush administration's insistence that no legislative approval is required.

In Iraq, the willingness to consider calling for the departure of American troops represents a major shift for members of the U.S.-backed government. Maliki this week visited Iran, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, urged him to reject any long-term security arrangements with the United States.

Failing to reach agreements this year authorizing the future presence of American forces in Iraq would be a strategic setback for the Bush administration, which says that such a presence is essential to promoting stability. Absent the agreements or the extension of the U.N. mandate, U.S. troops would have no legal basis to remain in Iraq.

President Bush has spoken directly to Maliki about the issue in recent days and instructed his negotiating team to show greater flexibility, Iraqi politicians said. U.S. officials circulated a draft of the status of forces agreement over the weekend without many of the most controversial demands, buoying hopes that a deal could be reached, according to Iraq lawmakers.

David M. Satterfield, the State Department's top adviser on Iraq, said he is confident the pacts can be finalized in July, a deadline that Bush and Maliki endorsed last year. "It's doable," he told reporters in Baghdad. "We think it's an achievable goal."

U.S. officials have refused to publicly discuss details of the negotiations. But Iraqi politicians have become more open in their descriptions of the talks, stoking popular anger at American demands that Iraqis across the political spectrum view as a form of continued occupation.

"What the U.S. wants is to take the current status quo and try to regulate it in a new agreement. And what we want is greater respect for Iraqi sovereignty," said Haider al-Abadi, a parliament member from Maliki's Dawa party. "Signing the agreement would mean that the Iraqi government had given up its sovereignty by its own consent. And that will never happen."

Iraqi officials plan to present the status of forces document and the security framework to parliament as a single agreement.

In a news conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Satterfield repeated several times that the U.S. goal is to create a more independent Iraq. "We want to see Iraqi sovereignty strengthened, not weakened," he said.

Abadi and other Iraqi officials said that assertion is undercut by the U.S. request to maintain 58 long-term bases in Iraq. The Americans originally pushed for more than 200 facilities across the country, according to Hadi al-Amiri, a powerful lawmaker who is the head of the Badr Organization, the former armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the country's largest Shiite political party.

Iraqi officials said the U.S. government also demanded the continuation of several current policies: authority to detain and hold Iraqis without turning them over to the Iraqi judicial system, immunity from Iraqi prosecution for both U.S. troops and private contractors, and the prerogative for U.S. forces to conduct operations without approval from the Iraqi government.

The American negotiators also called for continued control over Iraqi airspace and the right to refuel planes in the air, according to Askari, positions he said added to concerns that the United States was preparing to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran.

"We rejected the whole thing from the beginning," said Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a senior lawmaker from the Supreme Council. "In my point of view, it would just be a new occupation with an Iraqi signature."

If the talks collapse, several Iraqi officials said, they would request another one-year extension of the U.N. mandate. But Iraqi officials said they would also ask for modifications to the mandate similar to those they are seeking in the current negotiations.

"All the same issues would then be transferred to the talks with the U.N. Security Council," Abadi said.

Assuming that violence in Iraq will continue to decrease, politicians such as Saghir have begun discussing another option: asking the U.S. military to leave Iraq.

"Maybe the Iraqi government will say: 'Hey, the security situation is better. We don't need any more troops in Iraq,' " he said. "Or we could have a pledge of honor where the American troops leave but come back and protect Iraq if there is any aggression."

The Iraqi government is also upset because it wants the United Nations to lift its Chapter 7 designation of Iraq as a threat to international security, which dates from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Iraqi officials said the United States will not commit to supporting the removal of the label -- a position the Iraqis call an inappropriate bargaining tactic.

U.S. negotiators also said the agreements would not obligate the American military to protect Iraq from foreign aggression, Iraqi officials said, a promise they believe was a fundamental part of a declaration of principles signed by Bush and Maliki last winter.

"The prime minister is not happy about this," said Askari, who helped negotiate the declaration of principles, which outlined the strategic framework. "This is not what we agreed on."

Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of parliament who has been briefed on the negotiations, said the Americans recently had changed their position on four key issues: Private contractors would no longer be guaranteed immunity; detainees would be turned over to the Iraqi judicial system after combat operations; U.S. troops would operate only with the agreement of the Iraqi government; and the Americans would promise not to use Iraq as a base for attacking other countries.

"Now the American position is much more positive and more flexible than before," said Mohammed Hamoud, an Iraqi deputy foreign minister who is a lead negotiator in the talks.

In Washington, the White House hastily organized a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday after Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman and ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, respectively, demanded Monday that the administration "be more transparent with Congress, with greater consultation, about the progress and content of these deliberations."

In a letter Monday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Levin and Warner wrote that Congress, "in exercising its constitutional responsibilities, has legitimate concerns about the authorities, protections and understandings that might be made" in the agreements.

Although they have questioned the status of forces agreement's contents, lawmakers have not raised the issue of its congressional ratification.

The United States is a party to more than 80 such bilateral agreements in countries where American forces are stationed, but its proposals for the Iraq accord far exceed the terms of any of the others. Such agreements are traditionally signed by the U.S. president under his executive authority.

Although the administration has since said that the security framework is "nonbinding" and would not include any provisions for permanent bases or specific troop numbers, lawmakers charged that the White House was trying to tie the hands of Bush's successor and said the terms of the accord amounts to a defense treaty requiring congressional approval.

In a Senate hearing in April, a senior Defense Department lawyer acknowledged under questioning by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) that the Pentagon had no definition for the term "permanent base" and that it "doesn't really mean anything."

DeYoung reported from Washington

 

 

  1. WAR MAKES MORE EVIL PEOPLE THAN IT KILLS—Immanuel Kant
 
 

The single greatest waste of human resources is war related activities.  In the period from 1945 until 1985 the United states had consumed through its military expenditures enough to build a second United States—from factories, roads to homes and consumer items.    

 

Skeptically cartoon directory

 

CARTOONS

Over 30 assorted cartoons

6 Bush cartoons

Links to best on web of bush cartoons, jokes and animation

Danish cartoons that offend Moslems

More Danish Moslems

Moslems cartoons on Jews

More Moslems cartoons plus photos

Page of links including political cartoons

Cartoon gallery, latest ones

Another California Skeptic’s collection—huge, biting, for adults

Her collection of Bush Cartoons

 

SATIRE HUMOR

One act play on Bush’s tax cut—Al Franken

Brotherhood of religions—the Nation

Letters from Earth, Mark Twain at his best

5 humorous blasts at religion—Mark Twain

Eros & Zeus—Lucian

Zeus & the modern thinking Greeks—Lucian

The damned human race—Mark Twain

Zeus the pedophile—Lucian

Doc Laura, Old Testament morality

 

 

OFF SITE CARTOONS

PILLSBURY DOUGH BOY

A FUN COLLECTION

DAN COLLINS OF HUSTLER MAGAZINE

EXCELLENT COLLECTION OF UNDERGROUND COMICS

A FUN COLLECTION

POLITICAL & SOCIAL GEMS—Mark Froce

SEXUALLY ORIENTED COLLECTION

A FUN COLLECTION

EXCELLENT MUSICAL CARTOONS—JibJab

A FUN COLLECTION

LUNACY TOONS—outrageous, quality sounds