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Edited on Thu Mar-02-06 11:35 PM by Dover
in Iraq. Speak sparingly but build a big footprint. The news explaining the enormous scale of these bases may have been kept on the 'down-low' from the American public, but I feel certain the Iraqis know all about them. Nah..."wouldn't want to look like an occupying force". Besides, the Americans want to feed the insurgency to justify their occupation. From Mother Jones - Mar/Apr of 2005: Digging InWhen Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters last December that
he expected U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for another four years, he was
merely confirming what any visitor to the country could have surmised. The
omnipresence of the giant defense contractor KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown &
Root), the shipments of concrete and other construction materials, and the
transformation of decrepit Iraqi military bases into fortified American
enclaves-complete with Pizza Huts and DVD stores-are just the most obvious
signs that the United States has been digging in for the long haul. It's a
far cry from administration assurances after the invasion that the troops
could start withdrawing from Iraq as early as the fall of 2003. And it is
hardly consistent with a prediction by Richard Perle, the former chairman of
the Defense Policy Board, that the troops would be out of Iraq within
months, or with Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi's guess that
the U.S. occupation would last two years. Take, for example, Camp Victory
North, a sprawling base near Baghdad International Airport, which the U.S.
military seized just before the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Over
the past year, KBR contractors have built a small American city where about
14,000 troops are living, many hunkered down inside sturdy, wooden,
air-conditioned bungalows called SEA (for Southeast Asia) huts, replicas of
those used by troops in Vietnam. There's a Burger King, a gym, the country's
biggest PX-and, of course, a separate compound for KBR workers, who handle
both construction and logistical support. Although Camp Victory North
remains a work in progress today, when complete, the complex will be twice
the size of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo-currently one of the largest overseas
posts built since the Vietnam War.
Such a heavy footprint seems counterproductive, given the growing antipathy
felt by most Iraqis toward the U.S. military occupation. Yet Camp Victory
North appears to be a harbinger of America's future in Iraq. Over the past
year, the Pentagon has reportedly been building up to 14 "enduring" bases
across the country-long-term encampments that could house as many as 100,000
troops indefinitely. John Pike, a military analyst who runs the research
group GlobalSecurity.org, has identified a dozen of these bases, including
three large facilities in and around Baghdad: the Green Zone, Camp Victory
North, and Camp al-Rasheed, the site of Iraq's former military airport. Also
listed are Camp Cook, just north of Baghdad, a former Republican Guard
"military city" that has been converted into a giant U.S. camp; Balad
Airbase, north of Baghdad; Camp Anaconda, a 15-square-mile facility near
Balad that housed 17,000 soldiers as of May 2004 and was being expanded for
an additional 3,000; and Camp Marez, next to Mosul Airport, where, in
December, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the base's dining tent,
killing 13 U.S. troops and four KBR contractors eating lunch alongside the
soldiers.
At these bases, KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that works in cooperation with
the Army Corps of Engineers, has been extending runways, improving security
perimeters, and installing a variety of structures ranging from rigid-wall
huts to aircraft hangars. Although the Pentagon considers most of the
construction to be "temporary"-designed to last up to three years-similar
facilities have remained in place for much longer at other "enduring"
American bases, including Kosovo's Camp Bondsteel, which opened in 1999, and
Eagle Base in Tuzla, Bosnia, in place since the mid-1990s...cont'd
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/03/enduring_bases_iraq.html
_____________
Biggest Base in Iraq Has Small-Town Feel
Most Troops at Balad Never Meet Iraqis
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 4, 2006; A14
BALAD, Iraq -- Staff Sgt. Chad Twigg is on a one-year tour of duty in the middle of the Sunni Triangle. But on a recent winter morning, he wasn't digging a foxhole or tracking an enemy sniper or trying to grab some sleep between firefights.
Instead, the Army mechanic was checking out iPod accessories in one of the two post exchanges here at the biggest American base in Iraq. He worries about the lure of the PX, with its walls of shiny electronic devices and racks of new CDs. "I try to stay away from it to save money," Twigg said. But on average, 15 soldiers a day succumb and buy a television, said John Burk, the PX manager.
Balad Air Base is a unique creation, a small American town smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq. While soldiers drive as fast as they can beyond its perimeter to avoid roadside bombs and ambushes, on base they must drive their Humvees at a stately 10 mph, the strictly enforced speed limit.
The 20,000 troops based at Balad, home to the major Air Force operation in Iraq and also the biggest Army logistical support center in the country, live in air-conditioned containers. Plans are being made to wire the metal boxes to bring the troops Internet, cable television and overseas telephone access.
Balad is scheduled to be one of the last four U.S. bases in Iraq and probably will be the very last, officials say. "Balad will be here, I believe, to the very end," said Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc, the Slovenian-born F-15 pilot who commands the Air Force side of the operation.
Like most towns, Balad has distinct neighborhoods. The southwest part, home to thousands of civilian contractors, is "KBR-land," a reference to the construction company. "CJSOTF," for Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, is home to a special operations unit and is hidden by especially high walls. Visitors aren't welcome there, and the Army public affairs chief on the base said he'd never been inside...cont'd
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302994_pf.html
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