We are NEVER getting out of Iraq. Ever.

[Maven]

That's what amuses me most about all of these "pullout" plans.

They NEVER INTENDED to leave. Ever. We're building at least 14 longterm bases there for godssake.

The plan was always to establish a strategic outpost there to prepare for the coming energy crunch. The goal was to colonize, not democratize.

I wish our leaders would just SPEAK THE TRUTH about this issue, instead of merely appeasing people with empty redeployment talk. Because we're never going to end this madness until someone publicly acknowledges that these criminals' real mission actually has been accomplished.

[tatertop]

1. You are correct. I don't think one politician speaks the truth on this

Such a horrible charade, and they are all in on it.

[Stephanie]

2. a strategic outpost to conquer the entire Middle East

that was the plan. these neocons are legends in their own minds but their plans are utterly INSANE.

[mdmc]

3. yeah, I know

we should have never gone in... now ... in for a penny, in for a pound. We will only leave when the USA is willing to admit another vietnam like defeat.:mad:

Thanks GOP! Thanks DLC! Thanks Dems!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

6. And unfortunately, "we" are not there yet, at least not the ones with

influence, the politicians.

[Mr Rabble]

4. We have a winner. This should be a daily thread.

The sooner everyone realizes this stark reality, they sooner we will be able to deal with the real implications behind the policies.

[mdmc]

7. perhaps a recommend to awake the masses at DU?

:shrug:

[Stephanie]

12. DU has known about this all along

though we may have some new DUers who missed the memo

PNAC Links Archive >

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=110&topic_id=80

[mdmc]

13. thanks for the link steph!

[Maven]

15. I wouldn 't go that far.

Even many of those who are well-versed in PNAC seem to believe that this whole project can be thrown into reverse, or that the the neocons were simply overconfident in their assessment of the commitment that would be required.

Until we acknowledge the real policies at work here (as another poster noted in this thread), all "debate" about pulling out the troops is empty chatter.

This is dangerous for big-name Dems. If they run on pulling out the troops, I fear they'll be making a promise they know they can't keep. It's time for an adult conversation about this issue.

Thank you for the cross-posts though, especially the article downthread. :hi:

[danalytical]

5. Agreed

I always thought we were there for strategic reasons. It was never about a "Democratic" model/example for the middle east, it was never about simply stealing "Iraqi" oil, it was NEVER EVER about spreading freedom for the Iraqi people, and it was certainly not about WMD. But strategic positioning in the middle of oil country? DING DING DING!!! We have a winner. It's about strategic economic and military planning including oil and politics.

[Stanchetalarooni]

8. We never intended to leave the Dakotas either.

Or the Nebraska or Kansas hunting grounds.
They weren't called by those names then but we never intended to honor any Indian treaty.
The goal has always been to colonize.
Iraqi's will go the way of the Cree and the Seminole and the Sioux and the Cherokee and the Erie and the .......................................................................................

[Neil Lisst]

9. Bill Hemmer was hemorrhaging praise of a new base ...

... pointing out how self-contained it was, how Americanized it was inside, so that for Americans there, it would be just like a slice of the USA.

Media actually tell the story of bases being built, they just don't tell them with proper perspect.

We are building huge bases in Iraq, bases intended to last for decades.

[Stephanie]

10. and it was no secret- they have been very open about this insane plan >

all of us who were paying attention knew this was the plan - American hegemony.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=110&topic_id=80

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html


Practice to Deceive
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan.
April 2003
By Joshua Micah Marshall

<snip>

In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."

<snip>

Whacking the Hornet's Nest

If the Bush administration has thought through these various negative scenarios--and we must presume, or at least pray, that it has--it certainly has not shared them with the American people. More to the point, the president has not even leveled with the public that such a clean-sweep approach to the Middle East is, in fact, their plan. This breaks new ground in the history of pre-war presidential deception. Franklin Roosevelt said he was trying to keep the United States out of World War II even as he--in some key ways--courted a confrontation with the Axis powers that he saw as both inevitable and necessary. History has judged him well for this. Far more brazenly, Lyndon Johnson's administration greatly exaggerated the Gulf of Tonkin incident to gin up support for full-throttle engagement in Vietnam. The war proved to be Johnson's undoing. When President Clinton used American troops to quell the fighting in Bosnia he said publicly that our troops would be there no longer than a year, even though it was widely understood that they would be there far longer. But in the case of these deceptions, the public was at least told what the goals of the wars were and whom and where we would be fighting.

Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.

The brazenness of this approach would be hard to believe if it weren't entirely in line with how the administration has pursued so many of its other policy goals. Its preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue. During and after the 2000 campaign, the president called for major education and prescription drug programs plus a huge tax cut, saying America could easily afford them all because of large budget surpluses. Critics said it wasn't true, and the growing budget deficits have proven them right. But the administration now uses the existence of big budget deficits as a way to put the squeeze on social programs--part of its plan all along. Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con.

<much more at link>

[mdmc]

14. thanks for this info

Steph:yourock:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. But, we are going to get thrown out.

How long it will take, and how many more dead GI's to decorate the "Iraq Monument" will be required, are the only questions now.

[WestSeattle2]

16. I think you're absolutely correct.....

they never made any real plans for "after the war", because they knew exactly what would happen. Uprisings and chaos would require us to "stay a little longer"........

I'm thinking the last American might leave Iraq in 2025 or 2030. Maybe.

I would love to read the minutes of the Cheney energy meeting held shortly after they were installed in office.

A very interesting read I'm sure.

[bullwinkle428]

17. If they're building Burger Kings and car dealerships, I'm sure the

strategy is long-term...VERY long-term!

[sheelz]

18. And more.....

Can You Say 'Permanent Bases'?

There is as well a Subway, a Pizza Hut, a Popeye's, "an ersatz Starbucks," a twenty-four-hour Burger King, two post exchanges where TVs, iPods and the like, convoyed in, can be purchased, four mess halls, a hospital, a speed limit of ten miles per hour, a huge airstrip, 250 aircraft, air-traffic pileups of a sort familiar over Chicago's O'Hare airport and a "miniature golf course, which mimics a battlefield with its baby sandbags, little Jersey barriers, strands of concertina wire and, down at the end of the course, what appears to be a tiny detainee cage." Ricks reports that, of the 20,000 troops living in "air-conditioned containers" (soon to be wired for Internet, cable television and overseas telephone access), "only several hundred have jobs that take them off base." Recently, British reporter Oliver Poole visited the still-under-construction al-Asad Air Base in a stretch of desert in Anbar Province that "increasingly resembles a slice of US suburbia." In addition to the requisite Subway and pizza outlets, this super-base even has a Hertz rent-a-car office. In fact, al-Asad is so large--such bases may cover fifteen to twenty square miles--that it has two bus routes.

There are at least four such "super-bases" in Iraq, little American islands of eternal order in an anarchic sea. Whatever top officials and military commanders say--and they always deny seeking "permanent bases"--facts on the ground speak with another voice.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060327/engelhardt

[DemInDistress]

19. brits tried to colonize Baghdad in 1916...we come in peace they

said, and 18 long hard fought years later the brits left with their tails tucked way up their ass. I bet it
wont take 18 yrs to kick the usa out of iraq. hell all that's needed is a concerted effort by the sunni's and
sh-ia's to challenge the bush crime family -- military division and out they go. what would be the end result?
1 trillion dollars "GONE"
2-3,000 soldiers killed
50,000 wounded
100,000 more psychologically disturbed
100,000 PLUS iraqi's dead
250,000 iraqi's wounded
country in ruins
depleted uranium for millennium
chaos
and much much more..please add to anything I didn't mention !!

[dave123williams]

20. Not true; we've taken 30k troops out in the last month.

They'll try to pear down our force presence there in advance of the elections in November.

[phusion]

21. what about the bases? n/t

[rman]

22. Retrieving some troops does not equal "leaving".

So contrary to what you claim, the statement in the OP is true.

[madokie]

23. so the mission is accomplished, hmmm. you just may be on to something

I really do believe that all the answers can be found in the PNAC doctrine